The Seattle Pacific University men’s and women’s indoor track and field season began on Saturday, Dec. 9, at the Spokane Invitational. Unlike SPU’s basketball teams who continue playing through winter break, the track and field teams will be on a competition hiatus until Saturday, Jan. 13.
During their first meet, six of SPU’s athletes achieved new personal records, including sophomore economics major Brady Boun. Boun finished with a time of 7.38 seconds in the men’s 60-meter dash, just a little faster than his previous 7.40 from the 2022 indoor season.
“From last year, it was rough for me because I was injured for a very long time, so coming into off-season training, I focused on staying healthy,” Boun said. “I think that the meet could have been better, but I’m happy that I’m still healthy and just glad that I PR’d.”
Despite this promising start to the season, head coach Karl Lerum tries not to craft expectations.
“I think that’s unfair [because] we have 20 events and every athlete is going to have or need to work on different skills. For some, it will be block starts, it’ll be endurance, and so forth,” Lerum said.
Lerum is more concerned about what condition the team may be in once they have reunited and resumed team practices after the winter break.
“We don’t hold [students] during the break. They all have their assignments from their respective coaches, and it’s up to them to decide how much they want to train,” Lerum said.
While Boun aims to remain consistent with his assigned training, he anticipates struggling with motivation outside of team practices.
“It’s definitely harder to work out when you’re not with your team,” Boun said. “A lot of the workouts are a lot harder, so it’s hard to stay motivated and to stay on top of things. I try my best to get out there on a regular basis, and I’ve been doing that pretty often.”
Senior exercise science major Charisma Smith expanded on what the team’s training schedule for the break looks like.
“The way our schedule works is it’s five days a week. Saturday is [when we] shake out, just go move around basically,” Smith said. “The main workouts are Monday, Wednesday, Friday. We have two bigger, longer workouts, and one shorter, speedy workout, and those days are also our lift days. Tuesday and Thursday are more recovery, just do some lighter strides on the field type of thing.”
Smith shares Boun’s perspective on staying motivated away from the team.
“It definitely has its challenges; sometimes, it’s hard to get out there and do those workouts on your own,” Smith said. “Over the years, I’ve learned to get into that mode to motivate myself to go run and lift, so I think I’m going to be okay.”
Fourth-year data analytics major Elizabeth Daugherty similarly reflects on her struggles with individual training.
“They sent out an email with a training plan on it of what to do each day. If we’re doing a specific workout they want us to hit a specific time for, they give us the times to hit, the recovery and all that,” Daugherty said. “It’s hard because of where I live, there’s no open tracks. The one that is closest to my house I can’t be on it during school hours, so it makes it hard to plan when I can go run.”
Smith sees individual assignments as an opportunity for herself and the team to utilize their off-season training more directly and find where they need the most guidance.
“Something that’s been a struggle of mine is staying healthy,” Smith said. “I’ve gotten injured, I’ve had issues often, but I think being healthy is going to be key for me, so [I’ll be] talking with my coaches about rest and recovery.”
Daugherty competed in the women’s pole vault for SPU on Dec. 9 and vaulted 3.45 meters, which was below her 3.76-meter personal record from 2022. Despite vaulting below her personal best, Daugherty came out feeling more confident than she ever had.
“I wasn’t coming into this meet expecting a PR, but I just wanted to focus on what I had been working on in practice and I feel like I did a good job of doing that,” Daugherty said. “I felt very prepared. I felt like my training for this year was better than it had been in previous years. Now, I feel ready to go compete in more meets and do what I need to do.”
Smith ran 8.27 in the women’s 60-meter dash and 43.58 in the women’s 300-meter run. Smith usually competes in the women’s 400-meter but took the opportunity to test her skills.
“It was kind of for fun,” Smith said. “They’re not my events and it’s also the first time I’ve run those events, so I don’t have any other times to gauge off of, but I felt really good and I thought that the races themselves went pretty well, so I think it’s a pretty good start for the season.”
The team will reunite for practices on Thursday, Jan. 4. Until then, the team’s runners, throwers and jumpers will prepare for the season return with their individual assignments.
“I think it’s a good plan to get us set up for the rest of indoor season. The thing about indoor is it’s pretty short. We only have four-ish meets including conference championships. I’m excited to see how it goes,” Smith said.
