BW girls’ indoor track & field season opens with 32 athletes on February 2

By LENNY C. LEPOLA

News Assis­tant Man­ag­ing Editor

Big Wal­nut High School head girls track coach Joe Evener likes to call the high school base­ment hall­ways “The Joe Evener Indoor Track Train­ing Facil­ity”. Evener might be using the term in jest, but with the weather not suit­able for out­door train­ing, and the main and aux­il­iary gym­na­si­ums occu­pied by boys and girls bas­ket­ball squads, that’s where you find Evener and his girl’s indoor track and field squad prac­tic­ing after school lets out — in the base­ment hallways.

“We have 32 girls par­tic­i­pat­ing on the indoor team this win­ter,” Evener said. “We prac­tice every Mon­day and Wednes­day from 4 to 7 p.m. The first half of each ses­sion is run­ning, con­di­tion­ing, stretch­ing and work­ing on fun­da­men­tals, the sec­ond half is in the weight room. Our jumps squad has prac­tices in the aux­il­iary gym at dif­fer­ent times.”

While the prac­tice facil­i­ties and prac­tice times are lim­ited, Evener said Big Walnut’s girls take the Ohio Asso­ci­a­tion of Track and Cross Coun­try Coaches (OATCCC) indoor track and field sea­son seri­ously, with girls com­ing out to com­pete in the 60-meter hur­dles, 60-meter dash, 200-meter dash, 400-meter dash, 800-meter run, 1600-meter run and 3200-meter run; and the Golden Eagle girls’ field relay teams in the 4x200, 4x400 and 4x800 relays.

Big Wal­nut girls will also com­pete in the shot put, pole vault, high jump, long jump and triple jump.

Evener said the high school’s indoor track sea­son is really laid back; that attend­ing prac­tice is not manda­tory, but the girls take the indoor track sea­son very seri­ously because it’s such an inte­gral part of the whole cross coun­try and track and field con­di­tion­ing program.

“If a stu­dent ath­lete is play­ing another win­ter sport we don’t worry about them stay­ing in con­di­tion,” Evener said. “But for fall cross coun­try run­ners and track and field par­tic­i­pants in the spring, indoor track is a great way to stay in con­di­tion over the win­ter months. But I don’t get too excited if only two or three girls show up for a prac­tice. I tell them if they have home­work to do, go do the homework.”

Loose train­ing sched­ule aside, Evener’s indoor squads are com­pet­i­tive enough that they are one of the peren­nial teams to beat at the Cen­tral Dis­trict level. Big Walnut’s girls have won Cen­tral Dis­trict Indoor track titles in 1996, 2000, 2011 and 2012.

While mem­bers of the Golden Eagle squad began prac­tice before Christ­mas break, they will not com­pete until Feb­ru­ary. Their sea­son opens with meets on Feb­ru­ary 2, 9 and 16 at The Ohio State University’s French Field House.

On Feb­ru­ary 17 the girls travel to the Kenyon Col­lege High School Track Meet at Gam­bier, and on March 2 they’re closer to home at the Cap­i­tal Uni­ver­sity High School Meet.

On Sat­ur­day, March 9, the Girls Indoor Track and Field Team will par­tic­i­pate in the Cen­tral Dis­trict Indoor Cham­pi­onships at Otter­bein University’s Clements Recre­ation & Fit­ness Center.

Fol­low­ing each com­pe­ti­tion the girls wait for num­bers from around the State of Ohio. The top 16 qual­i­fiers in the state in each event at the end of the indoor sea­son are invited to com­pete at the Sat­ur­day, March 16, OATCCC Indoor State Cham­pi­onships held at Akron University.

Over the years Big Wal­nut has pro­duced 72 state qual­i­fiers and 22 state plac­ers; and in 2009 the Big Wal­nut squad placed sixth at state, was fifth in 2010 and placed fourth in 2012.

“The thing that I like about our indoor track and field sea­son is it intro­duces new peo­ple to the spirit of track and field at Big Wal­nut, and also gives them the oppor­tu­nity to meet the more expe­ri­enced girls with­out a lot of pres­sure,” Evener said. “We’ve also dis­cov­ered that the girls who par­tic­i­pate in our indoor sea­son are ahead of the curve when it’s time to get ready for the out­door sea­son; and from what I can tell so far this year, things are look­ing pretty good both for our indoor and out­door seasons.”

Posted by Gary Henery on Jan 2 2013. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.