Glancing out at Blake’s track on a beautiful spring day, one might sense a pulse of energy filling in the cracks of the expansive black tar. Blake’s track and field team is both larger and younger than ever, composed of more than eighty students and only nine upperclassmen.

     This season, the team has been a cohesive engine, working together and prioritizing the team as a whole even though the sport is typically viewed as an individual competition.

     Captain Maya Coyle ‘15 commented on the team’s chemistry, saying, “Track is just a really fun group of people. Everyone thinks that just especially because it’s an individual sport there’s not really a team aspect to it but I think I’ve made some of my best friends because of the track team and I just think that really speaks well to how we get along and how much we support each other.”

     People participating in different events practice almost solely with their distance or specific sport, however this has not prevented friendships and group activities.

    The student captains and the head coach Charlie Cracraft have made an effort to group the massive number of athletes together.

     “Usually once a week or so we have team bonding activities where we split up the event groups and we really get to know each other from other events and usually at meets we watch each other’s events and cheer each other on,” says Cracraft.

     Captain Michael Mitchell ‘17 remarks, “so we have friendships not just in our event groups but all throughout the team.”

      Age has not shown a decline in leadership, as seen in the captainship of Mitchell, a sophomore. “It’s come to a lot of the sophomores to be leaders and there’s a lot of middle schoolers so a lot of the younger freshmen and sophomores had to step up and start performing and practicing better and watching their behavior more,” Mitchell laughs. Coyle emphasizes, “There’s some really really big talent coming up.”

     As sections arrives, different individual runners, throwers, jumpers, and vaulters have different goals. Jordan Potter ‘15 and Carolyn Nye ‘15 have high potentials in making it to the state meet for throwing and pole vaulting, respectively.

     The girls are fresh off of their recent IMAC championship two weeks ago and the boys were one point off of placing fourth in their conference as well.

     Going into sections and state these athletes can count on nothing less than all eighty of their teammates cheering and pushing each other to success.