When you hear “TRACK!” being yelled at you, you know that you need to get out of the way, and fast. If you don’t move, you will either be run over by the distance runners who are steadily running 800m over and over again, or by the sprinters who are running full-speed 200m repeats.

Jumpers are practicing their high, pole, long, or triple jumps in the sand pits or on the mats and throwers are covering the fields throwing either shot-put, discus, and/or javelin. Like many other sports, track and field practices for about two hours and when there are meets, it can take up an entire day. Track athletes work hard five to six days a week to be able to jump higher or longer, to throw a greater distance, and to run a faster time.

The greatest accomplishment for a track athlete is to be able to run the two-mile a couple seconds faster, to lower a 100m dash time by a tenth of a second, to jump a foot longer, or to throw a few feet further. Winning is great, but the feeling of accomplishment comes from beating personal records. A literal race against themselves.

This year so far, the girls track team has lost only one meet against Groton-Dunstable and has won against all of the other meets. The boys track team has lost one meet against Westborough and won in all other meets. Senior captain Natalie Bettez said “I think the team has been really great this season and we have a lot of spirit and I think that we can improve even more for the league meet.” Jaque Manyak, also a captain and a senior, said “I think we can perform better than we have been and I hope people start pushing themselves more to become better.” Even though the girls team has been doing very well and been winning, improvement is always an option and the team has high expectations.

All dual meets lead up to the league meet, which is a meet where all teams that were competed against in the season compete against each other to win the league champion title. Both the girls and boys team have performed outstandingly well in the past few years at the league meets and hopefully they continue to do so.