High school notebook: Indoor track coaches view COVID-altered season a victory, so far – Kennebec Journal and Morning Sentinel
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Winslow’s Carly Warn runs the 55 meter dash during the Kennebec Valley Athletic Conference track meet on February 8, 2020 at Bowdoin College in Brunswick. Joe Phelan/Kennebec Journal
While the season has been far from normal, and with questions still remaining in regards to the postseason, area indoor track coaches have found the process to be a positive experience thus far.
“I think the kids, and I just don’t speak for my team, I have a pretty good relationship with Jason Allen over at (Maine Central Institute) and I talk to Jamie Juntura quite a bit over at Leavitt, I just think everybody is happy to have a season, to start there,” Winslow head coach Ken Nadeau said.
That’s not to say it’s been ideal for teams. Runners have competed in masks. Spectators haven’t been allowed at meets. And meets have also been planned around the availability of track facilities, which is more difficult than usual this season, as not every college has opened its doors for teams to compete. The last notable Kennebec Valley Athletic Conference meet was in late December, though a meet was scheduled for Monday, but canceled due to weather.
For Allen, an adjustment was getting final confirmation on whether his team would compete in masks or not right before the start of the season.
“That was an adjustment, for a lot of them to go from thinking that they were going to compete maskless, then finding out that was not the case,” Allen said. “But all in all, they’ve been great with rolling with the punches with whatever has been thrown at them, whether that’s having a meet around Christmas time, scheduled (earlier) and then moved from one venue to another… All in all, kids are pretty resilient and they want to be able to compete and are doing what is asked of them to make the best of it.
“The lack of facilities is probably the biggest (hurdle) that everybody is dealing with,” Allen said. “Two years ago, when we last had our regular season, we got to go to Colby (College in Waterville) every Wednesday night with everybody else in central Maine to practice which made a huge difference, especially for your technical events like pole vault, jumping pits, being able to run more than two hurdles so that come competition time, you know what you’d get out of (the athletes).”
Nadaeu added there’s always the feeling of the season ending early, a justifiable concern for a sport that didn’t have a regular season or postseason last year due to the COVID-19 pandemic, and numbers growing again in the state due to the omicron variant.
“I think the hard part is, you just never know if they’re going to pull the plug (on the season),” Nadeau said. “There’s a bit of anxiety about that, I get anxious about that myself. The (COVID) numbers that we’re seeing out in public are not less than what we were dealing with when we were shut down (last year). To compound that, there’s just not a lot of facilities that are allowing people in. And I totally understand (host school’s) position, they’re there to service their paying population. But who knows?”
Concern still remains for the postseason. While a date, time and location has been set for the Class A state championship …….
Winslow’s Carly Warn runs the 55 meter dash during the Kennebec Valley Athletic Conference track meet on February 8, 2020 at Bowdoin College in Brunswick. Joe Phelan/Kennebec Journal
While the season has been far from normal, and with questions still remaining in regards to the postseason, area indoor track coaches have found the process to be a positive experience thus far.
“I think the kids, and I just don’t speak for my team, I have a pretty good relationship with Jason Allen over at (Maine Central Institute) and I talk to Jamie Juntura quite a bit over at Leavitt, I just think everybody is happy to have a season, to start there,” Winslo…….
Winslow’s Carly Warn runs the 55 meter dash during the Kennebec Valley Athletic Conference track meet on February 8, 2020 at Bowdoin College in Brunswick. Joe Phelan/Kennebec Journal
While the season has been far from normal, and with questions still remaining in regards to the postseason, area indoor track coaches have found the process to be a positive experience thus far.
“I think the kids, and I just don’t speak for my team, I have a pretty good relationship with Jason Allen over at (Maine Central Institute) and I talk to Jamie Juntura quite a bit over at Leavitt, I just think everybody is happy to have a season, to start there,” Winslo…….