Indoor track and field enters off-week, sets focus on PAC’s

The Waynesburg University women’s and men’s indoor track teams have been working extremely hard all season. When it comes to days off, the athletes don’t usually have much time.

On Feb. 27, the Presidents’ Athletic Conference indoor track and field championships will be held at Youngstown State University. This leaves Yellow Jacket runners and throwers with a two week gap from now until their next match against the best of the best.

“It’s important to keep working to do well until the PAC Championships,” junior Isaac Orahood said. “It’s also nice to get people that are hurt or have pain to get some time to recover in order to be their best.” 

Sophomore Ivy Allen said the off-week provides athletes a chance to prepare from a mental state.

“A few days out of competing, we should start to visualize our starts, handoffs, jumps or throws,” Allen said. “I would also say fixing the little things is a big focus. Those little things like arm movement, knee drive, and keeping form.”

Every athlete has high expectations for each meet they are a part of.

“As a team, we expect to finish strong,” Orahood said. “We can’t say anything on placements though, because everybody can have a good or bad day. Any team can place in many varying spots.”

Coming off of a meet where Waynesburg athletes broke many personal records, coach Bill Lubich seemed to be satisfied with where the team is at moving forward.

“We had a full team heading out to the last meet, and 20 people had personal records,” Lubich said. “We even had four people with multiple personal records.”

However, Lubich is not about to the team go into the championships ill-prepared. 

“We have the advantage [of going] to West Virginia University to use their track. We are still going to train,” Lubich said.

The connection between Waynesburg and West Virginia is strong.

“They said come on down and use whatever will accommodate us,” Lubich said. “We have a really good relationship with them. When we don’t have a meet on a Saturday, we go down there on a Sunday and use their track.”

 

The men’s and women’s indoor track and field team seem to be confident going into the PAC championships. Coming off of a meet where 20 personal records were beaten, the Yellow Jackets can’t hold anything back in the weeks leading up to PACs.