Women look for strong start to season today
The Central Michigan women’s track and field team is looking to have a strong start to the 2011 indoor season today at the Chippewa Invite at the Indoor Athletic Complex.
It has been a long break for the team as they haven’t competed since the Chippewa Open on Dec. 3 which was a glorified scrimmage.
“Practices over break went fairly well,” said director Willie Randolph.
A good portion of the team stayed an extended period after fall semester classes got out and a week early before spring semester began, hoping to keep themselves in great shape for the season ahead.
“They did a very good job maintaining their fitness, so now we just got to ease them back in completion level fitness,” Randolph said. “We got a lot of good stuff done.”
Many athletes and coaches look at the long break in the season to be tough task to overcome, it can be difficult for an athlete to train all year long then have a break where they become vulnerable to let themselves become out of shape.
“That is always every coach’s nightmare across the country to have such a long break after four really good months of solid training,” Randolph said.
Another way to look at the long break in a positive light is that the athletes can relax themselves for only a moment and to be able to think about what they can work on and to fix any problems they feel need to be addressed before the season gets underway.
“It’s kind of nice to have the break to refocus, some people may not like it a lot but I think it’s good to get ready mentally,” said senior hurdles and middle distance runner Alexandria Sissions.
The Chip Invite is a big opportunity for the Chippewas to show how they will stack up against other teams around the area. The women will not only be going up against conference foes Toledo and rival Eastern Michigan, along with Detroit, Oakland University and Aquanis College.
“This meet is important because it gives a lot of the athletes that aren’t technically in uniform yet a chance to compete,” Randolph said. “It really helps us see who is ready to go.”
The athletes are very anxious to get out and perform against other schools, seeing how they haven’t done it since the end of the outdoor season in May.
“We want to see where our training has got us so far and where we have to go from here and what we need accomplished in the next couple months.” Sissions said.
As the season gets underway, Randolph said goals are high, but attainable.
