Quarantine complicated seasons for countless sports teams, players, and coaches; however, it takes more than an international pandemic to slow down the Ocean Lakes track team. 

Along with all other spring sports, outdoor track’s 2020 season was canceled due to COVID-19. Social distancing remains a priority, so almost all sports are unable to train as a unit because their sports require the players to gather and often come in contact. 

The track team, however, has an advantage. Because they are able to engage in their sport without physical contact or close proximity, team members complete workouts created by coach Mike Nestor in small groups or individually which maintains a team dynamic and continues an efficient regimen for the runners. 

“We started as soon as we knew school was done; coach put up workouts for the next week for us to do in groups,” said freshman Nate Bushey. “We’re able to respect social distancing and still run together which is cool because a lot of other sports can’t actually do stuff.”

The team started with time trials in order to see improvement in their later quarantine times.

“The workouts have been structured. Right now we’re doing lots of sprinting, and we will be doing time trials soon to compare to our first ones,” said sophomore Brayden Scharfe.

Although team-oriented, individual workouts could be a gray area for some sports teams, this type of practice presented nothing new to most track runners. 

“In the summer, coach Nestor did a lot of offseason training. He’ll give us a workout at the beginning of the week, and we typically meet in small groups to do them, so we’ve done this kind of thing before,” said Nate. 

Team members met in neighborhoods, roads, and public parks to complete their workouts, but regardless of the team’s impressive consistency, quarantining complicates recruiting processes for track runners.

“This is the time for a lot of juniors to potentially get scouted, and we have remarkable runners that could get the offers. Sadly; it’s going to be harder for them as seniors,” said Brayden.

Athletes who anticipated being recruited during these suspended seasons will have to use alternate methods or future seasons to try and gain a college’s attention. “We were all working really hard for this year; we were ready to see improvement. Sadly, we didn’t get to show off our work, but at least we have still been able to work hard and push through,” said Brayden.

Recently, VHSL canceled all offseason workouts and summer practices for fall sports.