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Strong season ahead for Horde indoors
Head coach Jay Condon is excited about the upcoming indoor track season. Not just because he lives and breathes the sport, but because he has started to gather around him a group of students who feel the same.
The fact that the team lost a single player to graduation and both the girls and boys teams were highly competitive last season also add up to high expectations for everyone involved.
Condon and fourth-year coach Jack Best are looking forward to a season of successes.
Returning essentially the entire team plus a few new faces, Condon said he looks for this team to be competitive in the league once again and taking on the elite programs in the winter season.
Discussions of track in this area usually involve Schuylerville and Condon said this year the team will once again be gunning to run with that program.
Seasons of building success have led other athletes to discover winter track as a way to keep competing, testing themselves and staying in shape at the same time.
“We’re starting to get some of the football players, which is something you would see at other schools or colleges for an off season activity. … I like to see their competitive nature,” Condon said.
“In addition to the football players, we added a few boys soccer players. I like having soccer players because the mixture of speed and endurance needed for soccer makes them good at the longer sprints and the mid-distance events,” Condon said.
Because there is no junior varsity in winter track, except for larger A and AA schools, the team also has younger athletes who get to train with the varsity and learn and grow from that work.
Condon said he’s still hoping to see more students come out for the team, particularly younger high school kids who will fill the team’s roster spots in the future.
This season two eighth-graders will join the team as Brianna Kelly and Taylor Scribner come to the team. “They’ll help out with our sprints and hurdles,” Condon said.
“We’ll be a little bit stronger with all the new faces,” he said. While sprints, hurdles and relays have been the team’s “bread and butter” Condon said, he’s hoping to expand that repertoire with all of the new faces coming to the team.
With the returning 4×200 girls champion team intact and an experienced squad, the skies the limit for this year’s squad.
“I’ve been really happy with the results,” Condon said.
The teams all travel for their meets gathering to compete at colleges around the region with the proper facilities.
The team starts its season at Union College and competes on Sundays for much of the season.
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