After a summer and semester of training, the men’s and women’s track and field teams are poised to begin this indoor campaign with the Cornell Relays being hosted in Barton Hall this upcoming Saturday, Dec. 1st.
The Red is coming off of a season that saw numerous strong senior athletes graduate, and is looking to build off of its success. Women’s head coach Rich Bowman is excited to see the freshmen compete for the first time.
“The meet’s a chance for those kids who’ve been training all fall to compete and wear the uniform for the first time,” he said. “It gives us a chance to establish where we are. This is the start for us.”
Men’s head coach Nathan Taylor is very excited about the chance to see how competitive his team will be this season.
“We have a lot of guys who have been training for a long long time,” he said. “I know they’re going to be pretty excited, and really be ready to get out there. I want to see people be competitive. It’ll be exciting to see everyone get out there.”
Beyond tangible results, senior co-captain Ailish Hanly is really looking for her team to demonstrate how much effort they put into competing this Saturday.
“I want to just see people continue to put themselves out there,” she said. “I’m looking for everyone to finish the meet and say that they did everything that they could do.”
According to Bowman, this meet’s field will consist of around twenty teams. For freshman decathlete Ryan Hynes, it is exciting to have the chance to finally get to run at this level.
“Really just the experience of running at the collegiate level,” he said. “Both of my brothers ran at the collegiate level, so I really just want to get that experience of running for Cornell.”
This meet is going to be the first chance for the entire freshman class to compete at this level, and according to senior co-captain Libby O’Brien, this meet is going to be an important test of fitness.
“I think it’s mainly a test of fitness,” she said. “It’s a huge process and this is going to be a great stepping stone to measure where we are. I think for the freshmen it’ll be a test for what events they’ll end up doing.”
For senior Bruno Hortelano, the Cornell Relays are going to be a chance for the Red to showcase all of the hard work that they’ve put in during the entire preseason.
“It’s the season opener,” he said. “It’s a meet in which all the work that we’ve put in, during the summer, the preseason, can finally be shown.”
Original Author: Juan Carlos Toledo