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Getting Ready
Members of the boys’ and girls’ indoor track team get ready to brave the elements outdoors, donning reflective jackets, as they prepare to do outside workouts. Photo by Joe Banas/The Woodstock Academy.
In the fall, it was the Woodstock Academy football team coaches who were shaking their heads and wondering where everybody had come from.
This winter, it’s the indoor track program.
About 85 originally signed up for the boys’ and girls’ teams. Approximately 67 have stuck with it thus far. That’s about double what the Centaurs teams had just two years ago.
“It’s great. It’s good to see growth in the program,” said second-year head coach Josh Welch. “I’m seeing a lot of crossover athletes this season. We got some football folks which is awesome. We have some throwers and sprinters from that program. It’s a great opportunity for them to participate in another program. They go and see (strength and conditioning) coach O (Brenden Ostaszewski) two to three times a week and also learn a new event in track-and-field so it helps both teams which is fantastic.”
One difference from other local schools that the Centaurs program offers is the number of competitions that it takes part in.
Most of the ECC participates in the three developmental meets the league sponsors and the league championship. League teams must go out and find other invitational meets to compete in.
That’s not always an easy proposition.
“Many of the Invites have become so large that placement is competitive,” Welch said.
The invitational will ask the school to provide a list of athletes it would like to send and the invitational determines those which it wants to accept based on past performance.
“That’s great for the real competitive kids, like (Woodstock Academy high jumper) Julia Theriaque. She will be competing in the East Coast and URI Invitationals which is fantastic, because she will go up against some of the best and will see some New England competition. But for a freshman kid who is just starting out and is just working on seed times, that’s not so hot,” Welch said.
That’s why Woodstock Academy also competes in a Massachusetts Indoor Track League along with the likes of Quaboag Regional, Leicester High School, Bay Path Tech and Northbridge.
Welch does have some talent to work with. Theriaque is coming off a hamstring injury that she suffered in outdoor track last season after qualifying for the New England championship in indoor competition by finishing seventh in the State Open. The senior’s best a year ago was 5-feet-2.
“She’s edging up on 5-4 which is where you really start to get more notice from Division I (college) programs. She could do that this season,” Welch said.
Also out this season is junior Ethan Aspiras who became the first-ever ECC boys’ individual cross-country champion in Woodstock Academy history this past fall.
Aspiras will have to lead a young distance group as the majority are freshmen.
The Centaurs will also have the young runner who finished second in the ECC girls’ championship and fourth in the Class MM state championship cross-country races, Linsey Arends.
It will be the sophomore’s first indoor track season.
“She is a great asset to the team. It’s exciting to see her leadership develop a little bit, she’s coming out of her shell, getting a little older. She is an amazing talent,” Welch said.
Other notable distance runners on the girls’ side include Meghan Gohn, who wants to qualify for state competition and whom Welch thinks has a good shot of achieving that goal, Iris Bazinet and Tessa Brown.
The sprinters group for the boys includes junior Trey Ayotte, who performed well last season, and Eric Phongsa, who qualified for state competition in the 200-meter in outdoor track. Adam Schimmelpfennig will also be a sprinter and hurdler for the Centaurs.
On the girls’ side, Daisy Li qualified for states in the hurdles in outdoor track and will be out for a first time for indoor. Gillian Price, a junior, has been a staple of the sprinting group for a couple of years.
In addition to Theriaque, freshmen Morgan Bonin, Delaney Canty and Isabella Sorrentino, who will also throw the shotput, will take part in the high and long jumps. Sorrentino, in middle school, had a personal best that was close to the state qualifying mark in the long jump last season.
On the boys’ side, Jackson Dias fell just short of qualifying for the states in the high jump, just missing the 5-8 mark that was needed. Senior Greg Weber is out for a first time and possesses a great vertical leap, which Welch hopes also translates into a good high jumper.
The football team has helped populate those who will do shotput for the team this season. Sophomore Everett Michalski is one of the leaders of the group.
Welch said he thinks he has about five or six boys in the shotput and about the same for the girls led by Ainsley Viano.
Will it all help the Centaurs compete with the likes of Norwich Free Academy and East Lyme?
“Eventually, I would like to see us at an ECC championship level. I don’t know if we’re there yet. I think we will be able to put a bigger dent in the bigger programs than we have in the past. I think we have a few standouts, a few potential ECC champions. That’s a big focus,” Welch said.
Marc Allard
Director of Sports Information
The Woodstock Academy
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