It is nearing late January, and that means indoor track & field season is kicking off. The team reported to their first practice on Tues, Jan. 16. With their first meet next week, the team is eager to get to work.

The track team (distance running and sprints/hurdles) and field team (shot-put, discus, jumps, and pole vault) practice with their squads to work on their events. Junior distance runner Ali Chaudhry talks about the work that his squad puts in during their practices.

“We workout Mondays and Wednesdays in the weight room and do speed drills. The rest of the time we’re often running a few miles outside. Saturdays are our recovery days. It’s important for all runners to take a day off to recover for the best results,” Chaudhry said.

Junior sprinter Josh Arguello discusses the sprinting team and their routines to get ready for the upcoming season.

“At a typical practice, we do dynamic stretching every day, with a couple sprints at the end of the warm-up. The sprinters work a lot of velocity drills, and we work on our driving phase right out of a block start. We’ll do time trials as well. We’ll also have really rough conditioning usually once a week,” Arguello said.

Senior thrower Chris Gonzalez says about how the throwers are always in the weight room, doing their best to get bigger and stronger so they can throw further.

“We hit the weight room a lot more than the other groups. We throw for maybe 30 minutes each day, and then the rest of practice is spent in the weight room. We lift super hard. It’s just part of being a thrower,” Gonzales said.

The boys are gearing up for their first meet next week, and they are all very confident in how the team is looking and their work ethic.

“So far the sprint team looks amazing. We have a lot of returning guys that are working really hard. Lots of them can probably have a chance to win conference or maybe go even further,” Arguello said.

“You heard it here first,” Chaudhry said. “Niles West will sweep at all levels at our first meet.”

The first meet is at the Niles West field house next week on Friday, Feb. 2. Make sure to come out and support our track & field team for their first meet of the season.