Spring is back, which means another season for track and field athletes to showcase their skills.

Coach Patrick Marshall has his eyes now on the final conference meet in the Cap-8 and the post season.

“Goals this season is to get more runners qualified to the regional meet and hopefully advance some on to the state championship. Also, we’d like to place pretty high in the Cap-8,” Marshall said.

This year’s team is going to be missing key runners, jumpers and throwers that graduated last year.

“We got a good amount of returners, but we did graduate a lot. It’s probably about half and half,” Marshall said.

Returning senior John Hobson said that he hopes to break the school’s record this season in the 800 meter set at 2:00 minutes.

There were bumps along the road last year during the season that Marshall hopes to avoid.

“At the regional meet, we were trying to get some people to the state meet, and unfortunately we just missed it in a couple events, and in one event we had an injury, which prevented a freshman Erin Spreen from moving on to the state meet,” Marshall said.

Last year was a stepping stone towards improvement for the team.

“I hope that they learn from their experiences last year, and kind of give them a drive. They are already working hard, but to work even harder, to try and make sure they make it into that state meet,” Marshall said.

Hobson feels that tensions get high when competing on the track.

As the runners line up to begin, some athletes let the intimidation from others shadow in the back of their minds as they prepare to start.

“I tend to get psyched out by the other racers before the race. That is something I have to overcome when I line up,” Hobson said.

Marshall said that this year they will be a little more strict on practice because “we might have been a little lax in the past, so we are just trying to make sure people are there working hard everyday at practice.”

There is still room for improvement in the team.

“We have a lot of younger kids participating this year, so over this season and future seasons they’ll continue to improve. Right now, we are not heavily senior based. We have a lot of underclassmen instead of upperclassmen,” Marshall said.

Participation of underclassmen is important for any team to be successful. With the assistance from Marshall and the veteran runners, the team will be looking to develop them into future veterans of the team.

“I want to focus mainly on workouts and trying to improve my running time by a few seconds each week. The support from the upperclassmen, as well as the team as a whole, has really helped motivate me to become better,” sophomore runner Tyler Bland said.

The support of upperclassmen helps inspire some of the younger athletes to stay determined and work hard.

“I just want to try and help them improve on the faults that we experienced last season. I try my best to motivate them to train hard and look to improve,” senior runner TaeLeasha Jones said.

The track team has both quantity and quality.

Participation of underclassmen is important for any team to be successful. With the assistance from Marshall and the veteran runners, the team will be looking to develop them into future veterans of the team.

Marshall said, “We have a lot of numbers. A lot of kids participating, which gives us options for events. We’re not asking as many kids to do all four events. We are able to spread things out more.”