With hockey and basketball getting into the heart of their seasons, the UW-Superior men’s and women’s track & field indoor season isn’t far behind. The Yellowjackets are coming off a great season, with both teams earning the Upper Midwest Athletic Conference Indoor championships, for the women it was their first in program history. Meanwhile, the men are looking to earn their eighth straight UMAC Indoor championship. Head coach Glen Drexler looks to build off the recent success and sees similarities with past teams.
“We continue to go into the mindset of we got to earn everything we want because nothing comes easy,” said Drexler. “We got to go through the work of the season to continually and gradually get better because nothing is going to happen day one, it’s going to happen throughout the course of the season.”
On the men’s side, junior Garrett Lynch reached Nationals in the Heptathlon event and is looking forward to coming back from break and getting right into the season.
“My favorite time of the year is coming up, we come back from winter break and the sole focus is on track for a couple weeks and I feel like you can make a lot of progress when that’s all you have,” said Lynch.
On the women’s side, they are not only coming off the program’s first indoor track & field championship but with many athletes also running cross country they earned a UMAC title only a month ago. Halle Barker is one of those distance runners and has noticed that the team has been able to push each other in hopes of earning back-to-back titles.
“We have a really strong team for distance this year and we’re kind of helping each other in making each other go faster by pushing each other in practices and work outs everyday,” said Barker. “So it’s been very helpful to have a bunch of us there.”
Even though we are still early in the season, Drexler likes what he has seen ahead of the team’s first meet.
“We’re ready to dive into this indoor season, and we have good rosters between the men and women to be able to do what we gotta do and to chase some championships and have some national qualifiers as well.”
The Yellowjackets first meet of the season is the CSS Early Bird Meet on December 29. After break the Yellowjackets will host a home meet on January 20 in the Dr. Lydia C. Thering Fieldhouse.
