Catoctin Indoor Track

Mia Ferraro
CHS Class of 22

(2/2020) The 2019-2020 regular season has ended for the Catoctin High School Indoor Track Team with its last regular season meet, the Liberty Premier Invitational on Saturday, January 11th in Lynchburg, Virginia. The meet was marked with success as the team achieved four season bests, 20 personal records and one new CHS school record at the event.

Senior Jacob Mcilvaine set a new personal best in Shot Put with a distance of 48’ - 11.50" taking 4th place in the competition. The 4x800 relay team, which consisted of sophomore Jenna Zentz, junior Rylee Burd, sophomore Brenna Williams and senior Emma Strickland, placed 6th with a time of 10:55.95. Emma also set a new school record in the 1000m with a time of 3:16.78, and is hoping to break the 500m record before the championship season is over. Throughout the season, the Cougars have steadily improved their times/distance with each competition, as the number of personal records have grown with each meet.

Coach Lois Strickland, who measures the team’s success not by wins but by improvement and self-satisfaction, attributes much of their progress to stability. She explained, "Coach Terri Gibbons was there for a really long time and really built the program up." Coach Strickland felt they were "kind of in flux" after Gibbons left in 2015, giving them little stability. "You know, they had one coach come in for a season, and then they had another coach come in and he left after a year. There was just a lot of change and that’s hard." Coach Strickland feels like that’s changing for the team and happily reports that they’re starting to have some continuity.

The team welcomed 16 new athletes this season - 13 boys and three girls. The girls team is a young group with only one senior, three juniors, five sophomores, and three freshmen, with all but two of the team members having less than two full seasons behind them. The boys team is more balanced with seven seniors, six juniors, two sophomores, and six freshmen. Fifteen of these athletes have less than two full seasons behind them. Catoctin’s new athletes are scoring well and showing a lot of promise.

One of those new runners is freshman Kasey Perhach. Coach Strickland feels she has "come along extremely well this year and she may even score at the regional meet." Jenna Zentz gave up basketball to run track full-time this year. Last year, she joined outdoor track and played basketball during the winter season. She decided to run indoor track this season so that she’d be ready for outdoor this year. Coach Strickland notes that Zentz was part of the 4x800 relay that almost won the state title last year.

Zentz isn’t the only multi-sport athlete running for CHS. This year, there are a lot of boys participating from the CHS baseball and lacrosse teams. Mcilvaine and junior Carson Sickeri gain skills in track that they use on the football field. Because many other sports require great running skills, many members of the team take advantage of the skills they sharpen on the track. According to World Record Camps, soccer players run an average of seven miles each game, football receivers and quarterbacks run an average of 1.25 miles, and tennis players run an average of three miles. Baseball players only average .03 miles per game but speed is extremely important and the ability to run swiftly in short bursts can make a huge difference on the playing field. Because of the many disciplines in indoor track, participating can build endurance, boost speed, improve balance, help prevent muscle injury, and improve performance by giving players better reaction time.

The fact that there are so many disciplines in indoor track - encompassing sprints, mid-distance, distance, long jump, triple jump, high jump and pole vault - is what Coach Strickland finds most challenging in her position. It can be difficult to find enough help to cover each area. This variety in events makes indoor track attractive to students, though, since it allows them to use their skills in whichever events they can succeed in. It also allows the multi-sport athlete to focus on events that will help them improve on skills needed in their particular sport. Many runners find that while they work hard at practice, being able to find their particular niche in indoor track makes it a fun experience.

While it’s a fun sport to participate in, the team works hard six days a week to prepare for the meets. A typical practice usually starts with an 800m run to warm up. Then the team stretches and continues on to drills. The team then splits into groups to work on their particular events. Many of the runners train outside of practice as well. Coach Strickland shared how senior Owen Bubczyk has been running with her daughter, Emma, since they were in 4th grade. Coach Strickland said that she and Owen’s mom "spent a lot of hours following them in the car while they ran at night in the dark and in all kinds of weather."

Coach Strickland has shared this type of dedication with Frederick County Public Schools while coaching for the past five years. Although she had never run track before, she became interested in it when her daughters started running. She began coaching as an assistant at Frederick High School, where she works as a front office secretary. She then became the head coach at Walkersville for a year before coming to Catoctin. This is her second year coaching at Catoctin and she is joined this year by assistant coaches Kevin Dorsey, Rob Palmer, and Dave Zentz. What she finds most rewarding is, "when a kid runs/throws that PR (Personal Record) and the excitement that they feel." She enjoys sharing her passion for running with the students and says, "Running is something that anyone can do for the rest of their life. That’s one good thing that I hope the kids can take away. It’s a lifestyle… and it’s a healthy lifestyle."

To further support the team, Coach Strickland is raising money to purchase cardio equipment for the athletes. She states, "We don’t have a cardio room. Our kids deserve the equipment, so I’m trying to get us some." So far, she’s raised enough money to purchase two new ellipticals for the program.

The hard work and dedication from both the coaches and athletes have paid off this season. The team has continued their success into the championship season at the Frederick County Championships meet on January 20th. Emma Strickland took 3rd in both the 500m and 800m. Senior Cole Torres took 4th in the 55mh. Seniors Mcilvaine, Tyler Hauk and Tristan Rice placed 2nd, 5th and 8th respectively in Shot Put. Freshman Alex Contreras placed 6th and Bubczyk placed 7th in the boys 3200m, while Williams placed 8th in the girls 3200m. Both the boys and girls 4x800 relay teams placed. The boys team, made up of senior Marshall Hahn, Bubczyk, Contreras, and junior Austin Smith, placed 4th. The girls team, consisting of Williams, Zentz, Perhach and Burd, took 5th.

The team is expecting a very positive outcome at the MPSSAA 1A Regional Championships on February 1st with many athletes qualifying for the 1A Indoor State Championships scheduled to take place on February 17th.