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With just three meets under their belt in this young season, the Cougar indoor track team now has a long break now before their next meet on January 9, where they will compete at the Bulldog Invitational at Liberty University’s Tolsma Track Center.
Cougars indoor track coach Jamie McCarty has little worry over the long break that his team will have to endure before competing again in early January.
“It’s not actually that big of a deal,” McCarty said. “Actually, the way that the holidays fell this year actually was a benefit to us because we were able to practice three days of Christmas week and we’ll practice three days of New Year’s week. So really, we only get an extra two days off and only missing four total days. It would have been nice to have a meet last weekend, the weekend we had the weather, but in this area, there wasn’t anything. The closest thing was three to four hours away and with the kids getting out of school, it would have been a little bit difficult, even if we hadn’t had bad weather.”
“I would have liked to have had one more meet just before we went to break just to kind of give us something to look at before we went into break. This year, the way the vacation fell, it wasn’t as much of a hindrance. It can be a hindrance when you get into a midweek holiday because a lot of people travel and it is hard to get them the day before or the day after. So you end up losing three, four days, maybe even a week sometimes.”
The team has competed at Liberty twice and having a split team enabled the Cougars to compete twice in one day on December 12 with one team competing at the Liberty Elite Invitational at the Tolsma Center, while the other team competed at the Wally Gilbert Invitational at nearby Heritage High School in Lynchburg.
McCarty has been pleased with his team’s achievements in their three meets up to this point in the season, but he has been very much pleased with a few of the individual performances that stick out on his team.
“We’ve been ok so far,” McCarty said. “On the girl’s side, we knew that Amber [Church] was going to be ok. She state qualified in all three of her events in the first meet – personal record in the long jump with 17’7”, ran a 7.65 in the 55 meter dash, high jump was 5’2” – all three of those were state qualifiers. We already know she is going. Robert Cobbs ran pretty well in the 55. Ethan Barker ran well in the 55 meter hurdles. Those same two guys, along with Randell Cobbs, who is doing basketball also, and J.T. Edney, also ran the four-by-two. They aren’t state qualified, but they are right on the border line. We have a pretty good chance after Christmas break of squeezing that one in.”
Also impressive for the Cougars have been some of the newcomers to the squad this season. Both Chuck Stone and Kody McDaniel, who are also football players for the Cougars, have been extremely talented with the shot put despite not having thrown before this year.
“One I think has already thrown 39 feet and the other has thrown 35, almost 36, maybe even 37 feet,” McCarty said. “So they’ve came out of the box and kind of picked it up pretty quick. They should be able to help us because throwers are weak in the district this year. If they continue to impress, we may be able to get some points from those guys.”
Some of the Cougars success has been seen in not only the indoor track program, but others as well. McCarty has a few members on his team who are not only competing in track, but are also pulling “double duty” with two different sports this winter.
“I think it’s great,” McCarty said. “I think it is a benefit to what other program it is, whether it is basketball, wrestling, or a sport in the spring like baseball or soccer. We’ve got one girl, Alexis McCloud, who is doing both basketball and indoor, and then we’ve got three guys actually, Randell Cobbs, Akeem Hill, and Arik Brown, are all three doing other stuff.”
“It all depends on scheduling, which is the hard part, like when you get snowed out and they move games or when games fall. You don’t want people to do both, but you don’t want it to come at the expense of one or the other. You’ve got to kind of work things out and we’ve done a really good job here in the past and probably in the future of the coaches understanding and trying to help each other out.”
One advantage that the Cougars may have this season is the fact that the team only travels to two destinations aside from the Heritage meet – Liberty’s Tolsma Track Center and Virginia Tech’s Rector Field House. The team will compete two more times at Liberty, then switch to Rector Field for the rest of the year, except for the season ending VHSL State Meet, which will be held at Liberty.
McCarty had little concern over the switch of venues and sees the benefits of having familiarity with the Tolsma Center for the final and most important meet of the season.
“It’s not too bad,” McCarty said. “For us, it’s a thing we have to do. Our state meet is at Liberty, so we’ve got athletes we know are going to make it to states and some that should make it to states. So it is a real benefit to them to be able to run there as much as possible because they are going to see that facility once they make it to states. Vice versa, we have our district and regional meets at Rector [Field House] at Virginia Tech. So it’s a catch 22.”
“The unfortunate thing is Virginia Tech is so big that we are limited in our number of entries and we only get a handful of kids every year. We get anywhere from three to five kids and that’s probably about it. So you lose a lot of your team because their standards are very high. It’s a big invitational because you are looking at probably 5,000 kids from seven, eight, or more states. They come from New York and all over the place to run because it is one of the best facilities on the East Coast. It’s something we have to do because we don’t have a lot of places.”
Those interested in traveling to watch the Cougars can catch them in action at the Tolsma Center on both January 9 and 16, when the will compete in both the Bulldog Invitational and Liberty/Asics Invitational.
Their first meet at the Rector Field House on the Virginia Tech campus will take place on January 30.
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