By Toby Bon

SAN JOSE, CALIF.⸺With the Silver Creek Track Team’s season already almost at the halfway point, track athletes have been adjusting to the organization of practices and different events.

At the start of the season there have been some new changes to track and field. To start, one of the changes is the school schedule. Silver Creek’s bell schedule has changed practice times to start and end later in the day. Another change that has newly been added to the track and field schedule is the addition of weight training. Weight training is very important since it helps improve the performance of athletes by strengthening their muscles that control their mobility.

Athletes will join separate coaches that practice different types of events on track. The coaching staff for track and field consist of Eric Leuscher who commands the logistics of the team, Donnise Powell who coaches sprints, hurdles, relays, Maggie Kasberger who coaches distance and middle distance, Alan Ibarra who coaches throws, Ivonne Luescher who coaches jumps. Athletes can also practice with different coaches so they are able to work on different types of conditioning for their other events. For example, an athlete that is mainly focusing on distance training can still participate in sprint training by working with the sprint coach, Powell. During the week, the athlete can participate in sprints for half of the week and practice in distance for the other half of the week.

Photo Caption: Silver Creek’s track team breaks off their team huddle at Santa Teresa High School on March 16, 2023 after participating in a quad meet.

Photo Credit: Toby Bon

Practice times for the different events are almost the same but with some alterations. To make it short, all events will start practice from 4:10-4:15 p.m to 6:15-6:30 p.m on Monday to Friday. The only days that have a different schedule for some events are Wednesdays when some of the coaches will decide to have an earlier practice schedule because of the minimum day bell schedule. On Wednesday, throwers will practice from 3:15-5:30 p.m. Sometimes the schedules can change with days where the coaches start practice early or late. For team communication, the team uses Remind to send announcements and messages to all athletes. So far, there have been six team meets with two invitationals, Silver Creek’s time trial, Dublin Distance Fiesta, and two usual meets. 

Jerry Dang, a Junior athlete participating in track and field, stated that with all of his experience in running is that athletes will have to push and continue through challenges despite how hard they may be in order to improve themselves, which is perseverance.