(Anita) CAM is excited about the participation they have with 23 athletes on the team.
Coach Luke Symonds says, “I didn’t know with last year after it being cut short who would go out, so I’m excited we have pretty good numbers this year. Honestly I’m excited for every single girl. It’s been over a year since they’ve been able to run or throw or jump. We are looking at having a scrimmage at SW Valley in a couple of weeks so that will be nice to get some of the butterflies out and kind of see what they can do.”
The field events should be particularly strong for this group. “We have Molly Venteicher and Mallory Behnken as two throwers that made it to state. Mallory was a freshman and Molly was a sophomore. We are expecting big things from them. Jade Jackson is a two time state qualifier in the high jump, so looking forward to that. Then basically everybody else we are hoping to see them do their best, compete, and hopefully put together some solid times.”
Practices typically are allowed to begin in February, but this year the state made March 1st the official start date. “The main focus so far is on getting in shape. Once the meets start it’ll be sometimes three meets per week and you’re not going to put a bunch of running on your legs on a day off. You’ll focus on handoffs and fundamental stuff like that. Right now we are just trying to get in shape the best we possibly can. We’ve been very, very fortunate with the weather that we’ve had that we can be outside. Our baseball field didn’t have snow on it. Our track has been good for the past week so we’ve been outside running on that and that’s been wonderful.”
Symonds admits he’s curious to see how the athletes are impacted by having last season off. He’s glad the state is allowing for 16 outdoor meets this season. The Cougars begin their season March 29th at Bedford.
