Most spring sports have already kicked off, but coach Jon Blank has taken a bit more time to season his track team. Washington was slated to open the season this week with a meet at North Pitt today and another at South Central on Thursday, but both events have been impacted by the weather.

Blank will instead get a little extra time to prepare his athletes. The Pam Pack turned out in impressive numbers for this season. Blank, who is also the school’s athletic director, was elated to see the number of athletes from other sports that came out to improve themselves.

Both the girls and boys have a lot of talent back from last year. They’ll hope to compete for a 2-A Eastern Plains Conference championship on their way out of the league.

Here’s what Blank said ahead of track season.

 

How pleased he is with seeing athletes from other sports:

“We’ve had great numbers, and it seems like we have kids out there from other sports that really want to improve themselves in the offseason. They want to compete hard. We’ve got a bunch of kids from football and basketball programs that want to raise their own bars and expectations.

“It’s good to see that they’re meeting our expectations. We’re close to 100 percent of our football players either playing baseball or running track this year. We’ve got several basketball players out that we haven’t seen in the past. I think, right now, it seems like there’s a unified front from our coaching staff to get the kids out there. We also have a bunch of (coach Jim) Kozuch’s soccer kids.”

 

What’s coming back from last year’s boys’ team:

“For the boys, our biggest loss is our throwers. Lexroy (Brown) and Brandon (Jackson) really kind of carried the team last year. Beyond them, everybody else was pretty young. We did lose some distance runners. … Our sprinters were all underclassmen, so we’ve got all of them back. That was one of the things I was looking forward to last year.”

 

How excited he is for the girls’ squad:

“I’m pretty excited for the girls. I think girls like Kennedy Landen and Kizoria Redmond … they’re really looking strong right now. We’ve got to find out the right combination of events to get the most points out of them, but we’ve got an excellent group of girls.”

 

What he hoped to accomplish heading into the first meet:

“We want our kids that are coming back to go ahead and show some improvements in their events. For our young kids, and the ones that are new to track, we want to figure out what they’re going to be good at. Then, they can focus on the techniques and fundamentals.

“Of course, just getting in track shape can take a couple of weeks. Even if you’re coming right off of basketball, track shape is a little bit different than all of those other sports.”

 

What to expect from the rest of the 2-A Eastern Plains Conference:

“We’ve got super high expectations for our girls. We’re trying to fill a couple of events where we think we might have a few weaknesses. We’re trying to get girls out to settle into some of those positions for us.

“For the boys, all of a sudden, I think they realize that, with their improved dedication in the offseason program, that they can compete for a conference championship. A year ago, we would call ourselves a young team. This year, I’d call us a competitive team.”