Track and field commences their outdoor season
Within a split second, the outdoor season for the men’s and women’s track and field teams began. Track and field commenced their season at the 22nd annual Monmouth Season Opener at Monmouth University on March 25.
The men’s team used this meet as way to give their better runners a break and to give the younger members of the team a chance to race, according to Head Coach Mike Glavin.
“That’s the way I always use this meet,” Glavin said. “Some of the guys, [senior] Brandon Ossont ran very well. He ran well in the open 400 and he came back on the 4×400 that was third. Aaron Lemma, who is a freshman on the team, ran his fastest 400 of his life and then came back and did very well in the 4×400 meter relay that wasthird. So that’s kind of nice.”
Freshmen Colin Gallagher, Colin Parker, Joey Angelina, David Bryant and Lemma had strong races, according to Glavin.
“It [the track meet] served the purpose it was supposed to,” Glavin said. “With those younger freshmen and sophomores running faster than they ever had. We got something we needed out of it for our future.”
Next weekend and the rest of the season will be a bigger challenge for the team.
“This past weekend at Monmouth was the season opener for the younger guys and the developmental guys, and the Colonial relays is the season opener for the top guys,” Glavin mentioned. “So obviously we’re looking for good competition and successful races but at a much higher level. We’re looking for a lot of guys to do much bigger stuff qualitatively.”
While the men’s team had individual success, the women’s team had overall success.
“I would say it went very well,” women’s Head Coach Melody O’Reilly said. “ I think that the team individually probably had their own thoughts on what they would want to do in their performances, but overall, as a team, we just hope to start out with a really strong opener, and we did that.”
Within the women who ran at the March 25 race, there were many personal records, including sophomore Nathaniela Bourdeau, senior Julia Jenkins and freshman Maggie Maguire in their respective races.
“So for next weekend, we hope to be really competitive down at the Colonial Relays, that’s at William and Mary and that’s a three-day event,” O’Reilly said. “We have distance runners racing on Thursday night and then we’ve got open events on Friday and lots of relay events on Saturday. We just hope to show really well and strong across the board.”
The women’s runners will go from a daylong event to a weekend long event, which according to O’Reilly, the team approaches differently.
“Typically the athletes who will travel to a relay event or to the colonial relays realize that they’re going to compete two days in a row, so they do probably approach it a little bit differently and try to really set their minds up to perform well every time they step on the track,” O’Reilly said.
Both the men’s and women’s teams will travel to the College of William and Mary to compete in the 52nd Annual Colonial Relays on March 30 to April 1.
