Welcome back to Johnnies Track and Field! While the track portion of the blog has been dormant, the team has been anything but. Practice, finals, and even a meet have kept our team busy and now the athletes have headed home for Christmas break. While you all are preparing for the holidays, I will give you a quick update on what we have been up to and some upcoming dates to keep in mind.
We started practice on October 21st and have had six full weeks of practice this Fall. The time has been great to integrate freshmen and spend time working on technique. Unique to our sport is the long interval of training before a meet. Team sports and even high school track teams have such a short buildup to the competitive season with often only two weeks of practice before games/meets start. The six weeks of training is a luxury that I enjoy even if it does get a little long for the athletes.
It will seem foreign to alumni, but we added a meet to the schedule and already competed in our first meet. Five brave athletes, including two First Years, thought they were ready to compete (or were simply postponing studying for finals) on December 7th. Keep in mind, that I do not plan training to compete in December. Our next meet isn’t until January 17th, so it’s a little early to be race-ready. However, several of the men on the team were getting antsy with that much practice and no opportunity to race.
I took two vaulters and three sprinters to the meet at Mankato. Our freshmen sprinters, Alex Peters (Blaine) and Pierre Deutschlander (Maple Grove), had solid first races with Alex making finals against the Division 2 sprinters and Pierre running his first ever 400m dash. Vaulters Shawn Schinder (SO, Maple Grove) and Drew Dockendorf (JR transfer from Concordia-St. Paul) looked good and will anchor a strong pole vault squad. The surprise of the meet was Ryan Miller’s 60 meter dash. I am usually pretty good at predicting performance, but I didn’t expect Ryan to start the season by breaking his school record (previously 6.93) with a time of 6.91 seconds.
Hopefully the performances from the meet are an indication of positive things to come this season. We graduated a few key guys from last season, but added a good group of new athletes. Our freshmen have been impressive this fall and we also added some big transfer students who will contribute immediately.
I am excited about the upcoming year and will continue with the blog throughout the season. After the holiday break, I will highlight some of our new team members and give my outlook on what to watch for this year.
In the meantime, here is a list of this season’s home meets to plan your vacations around (we host the indoor conference meet!). There is also an online store if you want SJU Track and Field apparel. Orders are due no later than December 24th.
2020 SJU Home Meets
Saturday, January 25th: Alumni Meet
Saturday, February 15th
Thursday- Saturday, February 27-29th: MIAC Indoor Championships
Saturday, March 28th: Optimistically Outdoor Meet
Thursday, April 9th
Saint John’s Track and Field Apparel Order
Pass code: SJUTF20
DEADLINE: December 24th
Merry Christmas!
Jeremy