Speaking
of Sports 

by
Lance J. Lilla

 
Novi Track wins conference title
yet again

May 14, 2012

Last Friday around 8:30 p.m. the KLAA Kensigton Conference track meet came to end. In this moment Novi athletes, coaches, and fans could hold their heads up high once again. By winning the conference title for the third year in a row, the Novi Wildcats could leave a proud team for all their efforts put on display at the Plymouth-Canton track and field.

Though, believe it or not, the 'Cat's success did not come easy. Multiple athletes on the team had to run through, and overcome injury, sickness, and serious fatigue. If you've never been a track athlete yourself, it's hard to fathom the physical strain a runner must withstand throughout the course a meet such as this.

For most races in larger invitational meets, each athlete must first warm up and then participate in a preliminary race. If they do well in that, they will advance to the semi finals, which does not take place for an extended period of time after the prelims, meaning the runner loses the warmth that they just worked so hard to attain and they must warm up again. If the athlete does well in the semi finals, they advance to the finals, meaning that once again, yup, you guessed it, they need to warm up.

So, warming up and racing once quickly turns into warming up and racing three times. If you think about it, if a runner is talented enough to make it to the finals of one event, then they are most likely talented enough to compete in other events as well, which happens quite often for runners.

Take senior Michael Jocz for example. Between all of his events, which he placed and scored points in all of, he ran a grand total of 8 times. Exerting that much energy in one long, hot, grueling day is no easy task.

Oftentimes, us track athletes hear banter claiming how easy track and field is due to the fact that "there is no ball involved" or "all you do is run in an oval." Sure, there may not be a ball involved, and we may just simply run in an oval, but before you get any ideas of talking down to another track athlete, try it yourself. I'm sure your opinion will be quite different afterwards.

(c) 2012 Novi Information Network
www.novi.org