With three meets in the books, the Raptor track and field teams have had an exciting start to the season. The first was the JI Distance and Throws Carnival, hosted by Stall High School. This meet was a striking success with Calvin Volkmann (junior) winning the Men’s 3200 and achieving a personal record with a time of 9:41.47. Rhythm Harris (7th grade) also won the Middle School 1600 with a time of 6:07.12 and Cate Arrants (junior) won the Women’s 1600 at 5:59.61. This was also a personal record for Cate. Other PR’s from the Carnival include sophomore Brayden Bunt in the Men’s 3200 with a 10:24.56, freshman Elizabeth Wheelon in the Freshman Girl’s 1600, senior Ren Baylock in discus with a distance of 10.52 meters, junior Lila Garrett in javelin with 77′ 2″, and senior Charlie Kramer in both shot put with 9.07 meters and javelin with 105′ 6″. This meet included a variety of competitors both inside and outside of AMHS’s region, including Cane Bay, Ashley Ridge, Porter Gaud, Oceanside, Wando, Lucy Beckham, West Florence, Stratford, Socastee, Stall, and Westminster Schools.

Saturday, March 2nd gave even more opportunities for success, as this was the first meet including sprinters. It was the Father Kelly Invitational, held at Bishop England High School. Despite an event delay of about 3o minutes, the meet proceeded as planned. This meet was interesting as it featured the first ever co-ed 4×400 and 4×800 relays in our region. Many school records were set and broken. The Boy’s Sprint Medley, Cole, Tommy, Xander, and CJ set a new school record with a 1:48.20, earning them 6th place. The Boy’s shuttle hurdles, the Co-Ed 4×400, and the Co-Ed 4×800 all also established school records, with times of 1:30.48, 4:39.83, and 11:10.01, respectively. Haley Weber (junior) also won Girl’s High Jump with a height of 1.45 meters and the Boy’s 6400 meter relay, including junior Calvin Volkmann, junior Hunter, sophomore Brayden Bunt, and junior Quinn Swanton, also took home first place with a 18:31.81.

On Wednesday, March 5, was the team’s first open entry meet at Wando. This was an exciting opportunity for some of the team’s newer members to compete and get a sense of what times they run in a competitive environment. The Men’s 4×800 team won their race, however it is worth noting that the race they won was against girls. When asked about the upcoming season, boy’s distance Captain Colin George said he is, “proud of all of the work the team put in the preseason- it’s paying off. Of course we couldn’t do it without our great coaching staff, and I want to especially give kudos to Coach Johnson for really building this program into what it is today.”

Upcoming meets include the Lucy Beckham Invitational on March 13th, and another meet hosted by Lucy Beckham on March 20th. This marks a historic year for AMHS’s running program as there are currently 109 registered athletes on the combined boy’s and girl’s track teams. This puts us above in numbers of most 4 and 5A schools. In the wake of this, this year is the first year that the coaches will be making cuts. After the second Beckham meet, cuts will be made based on meet performance, practice attendance, and effort. This will have given coaches eight weeks of practices and three weeks of meets to work off of when making decisions. Coach Brian Johnson underscores that the reasoning behind this change is the wish to field a competitive track and field program while also giving athletes a good experience. After that point the roster will be limited to those close to and at Varsity level.

Track and Field is an interesting sport, as there are generally not strict Varsity versus JV teams. Instead, the whole roster is invited to Wednesday meets, in which coaches can enter as many athletes as they wish. While those with slower times are put in the slower heats, effectively seperating “varsity” versus “junior varsity” athletes, there are no strict lines and a faster time can move one into a faster heat the next week, and all heats are compared against eachother when declaring a winner. In that way,

JV and Varsity athletes do race against each other. However, most Saturday meets have a limited number of entries per coach, as they include more teams and have less space. Coaches only enter their best runners, generally no more than five per race, in these meets. Due to this, many refer to Saturday meets as “Varsity only”. Despite this, based on practice and meet performance, coaches may opt to switch out which runners they send on Saturdays, making the roster very fluid. Due to this fluidity, Track and Field does not suffer the same restrictions on upperclassmen JV athletes as other sports do. It is not allowed for juniors and seniors to be on the active roster for JV in other sports, but in Track and Field, this is much more common.

As AMHS does not have its own track, and the previously beloved Danny Jones is undergoing rennovations, the team only gets a chance to practice on an actual track once a week. Every Monday, the team ventures to Military Magnet, where field athletes practice next to the track, and Magnet sprinters and distance runners share the space on the track with Military Magnet’s sprint and distance athletes. Tuesdays and Thursdays are generally dedicated to be long, shakeout mileage runs for distance runners in the neighborhoods around AMHS, so that they don’t cramp or become exhausted during the season when most Wednesdays and Saturdays have races. When there is no meet Wednesday, Wednesdays are used for makeshift sprint workouts on the blacktop surrounding the school and in the school bus loop. Tennis and lacrosse players frequently have a view of the track team completing their two lap warm up around the bus loop after school, the only time that sprint and distance practices overlap.

This is an exciting season for Magnet’s track program as it is one of the first years they have drawn in such a crowd of underclassmen. This indicates a great foundation from which the coaching staff can build in the upcoming seasons. As a senior, I am hopeful that we can pull away with a state win, but even if not, I have no doubt that the coming years hold one for this program.