Track and field offers a variety of running events, from sprints to hurdles, as well as field events, including throwing and pole vaulting. This school year, Xavier’s track and field team continues to accomplish self-set goals and beat school records as the season intensifies.
Xavier’s Division I team has several highly ranked athletes in the state for their events.
Jarret Eaton is head coach for the team. He has been coaching at Xavier for the past four years, but became head coach of the team this season.
He is not only an inspirational coach that his athletes look up to, but he was once a decorated runner himself.
“I used to train professionally at a high school in South Carolina. Being around kids and seeing how much my influence meant to them, and knowing that I had a skill level of expertise to offer them, inspired me to become a coach,” Eaton said.
With Xavier’s team having intense practices every day and a large workload from school, Eaton thinks back to his first-hand experience as a runner to help manage his team’s physical and mental health.
“It’s all about communication. Having good communication with the athletes, knowing their feedback and relying on my personal experience to know what their bodies can handle and what training age they are at are important,” said Eaton.
Not only is communication key to avoiding burn-out for the athletes, but Eaton adopts the practice of “less is more.” “It is really easy to overdo it, and you cannot recover from that. But if we take the stance of ‘less is more,’ we can always ramp things up and have things be a little more intense,” said Eaton.
Track and field is a sport that takes a mental toll on an athlete. Eleanor Borchad ‘25, one of Xavier’s sprints and hurdles runners, expressed, “Your teammates can’t pick up your slack. It can be really nerve-racking before you run. It can also be really disappointing or super fun after you finish depending on how you did. It’s hard not to get caught up in the emotional highs and lows, but at the end of the day, your coaches and teammates are always there to support you.”
Mackenzie Lopez ‘24, another of Xavier’s sprints and hurdles runners, adds to the difficulty of the sport, “I would truly not be where I am today without my team and coaches. Track is such a mentally and physically difficult sport. The workouts can be grueling and you are constantly pushing your body to its limits. It’s nice to know that you are going through that with your teammates.”
Besides all the challenging aspects of the sport, Borchard and Lopez are just a few athletes on the team who have accomplished beating school records and achieving their own personal goals.
The 4×100 team broke the school record this year, which Lopez is a part of. “I am excited to see how low we can bring that time down,” Lopez said.
Not only has Lopez been a part of beating a school record this season but she also signed with Brown University to run Division 1 track and field.
Borchard, who transferred to Xavier this year from out-of-state, and is new on the Xavier track team, has already broken the school record in the 300m hurdles with a time of 42.64 seconds, and ran on the 4×4 team which broke another school record.
The biggest meets of the season are arriving soon: regionals, divisions, and state.
“We have been training since August, so it’s just a matter of trusting the process and giving it everything we can,” Lopez said.
