The Washington girls’ track team continued its excellent season Wednesday when the Pam Pack hosted a meet with Farmville Central and North Johnston. The Lady Pack — led by Cierra Hales, Caitlin Hales, Kaylah Ward, Nikki Foreman, Kizoria Redmond Guadalupe Hernandez and Kennedy Landen — improved to 9-1 on the season. Their lone loss was to a top-tier 4-A school in South Central.

Experience has led the way thus far. The Hales sisters are both seniors, among others. Forman is new to the high school, but she has a track background that has been apparent all season. The girls have also received valuable contributions from younger runners.

“We’ve got several girls that have been with us for a couple of years now,” coach Jon Blank said. “We expect them to lead the way and set the tone. Caitlin and Cierra Hales are four-year runners for us. They’ve been strong for us.

“We also have some young girls that are doing excellent for us. We have a freshman, Kizoria Redmond, who is as naturally talented as I’ve probably had as a freshman. She can be good at every event in track. She just has to learn track.”

The strength of the team’s upperclassmen backbone coupled with the younger standouts made a 2-A Eastern Plains Conference championship the goal for the season.

“With what we have, we expect to win a conference championship. It’s been a while for our girls to have won a conference championship,” Blank said. “Our guys have won several over the years, but it’s been a while for the girls. I feel like we have a good combination to get that done.”

The Lady Pack, especially with Wednesday’s success, is well on its way to accomplishing that and more. The girls are still tweaking different things to find out their best lineups.

“We’ve tinkered with a whole lot of things,” Blank said. “We’ve changed our lineups in the relays quite a bit and we’ve tried different girls in different events because we want to know where we’re absolutely strongest at when the season ends.”

Other than fitting different girls in different spots, one thing Blank knows they need to work on is timing during relay events. Part of that issue is derived from switching around the lineup as much as they have.

The other part is that the team has missed a step due to the spring break layoff, as seems to be the case in other sports.

“It’s a matter of putting the practice time in,” Blank said. “A relay, you’ve got to have teamwork and it’s very technical. We’ve got to put time into that.”

The boys, meanwhile, are a younger group this year. That hasn’t held them back from finding a good deal of success, though, as they’ve built a 7-3 record that also included a win in Wednesday’s meet. The goals for them are more aligned with building toward the future.

“Our expectation with the boys is for them to learn track and compete,” Blank said. “We feel like we’ve got future champions with this group, but they’ve got to learn how to be track kids first. … I think they can finish this year pretty strong and then we can build off of that.”

Washington’s post-spring break homestand continues Monday. Greene Central and East Carteret will be the visiting teams.