FHN’s track and field team competed in their first meet of the season at Francis Howell Central, and FHN competed against FHHS and FHC. The meet was set-up to be more of a practice in order to prepare athletes for upcoming meets against other schools. 

“I think [the team] did really well,” coach and gym teacher Kimberly Martin said. “Just kind of a good opportunity to get them into a meet and kinda learn everything they need to know about meet day.” 

Unfortunately for the team, the boy’s sprint team was quarantined due to exposure to COVID-19 and could not participate in the meet. Despite missing a significant amount of runners the team still participated, just without running certain events. 

“We have to be careful because we don’t want our entire team to get sick,” Martin said. “I completely understand it, I’m not mad about it. It’s something I think all teams everywhere will have to deal with right now.”

Aside from the quarantined boy’s sprint team, other teams such as the distance and girl’s sprint team competed, and were able to generally perform well in relation to the other teams of the district. Senior Anthony King, who has been running track for all four years of his high school career was impressed with the performance of the team.

“It was nice to see the kids actually just do good,” King said. “To compete and actually be up there with some of those bigger schools felt really nice, so I was proud of us. Everybody hit the goals that we set, and that was why it was nice to see.”

Even though no awards were given at the meet, the performance was a great sign of things to come. After a promising first experience, the track team hopes to continue improving. Despite an unfortunate quarantine, athletes are eager to become better at track.

“We had a lot of new kids who were learning, who don’t know what to do, who were nervous,” Martin said. “It is a good meet to help them get over a little bit of those nerves.”