As spring kicks off we are approaching many sports. A competitive sport Lewis Cass competes in is track and field. Track and field involves distance running, mid-distance, sprints, jumpers, and throwers. The boys’ team is coached by Matthew Benner, and the girls’ team is coached by Megan Mannering. The boys’ team has four seniors including Arian Gascon, Jeronimo Peyrot, L.J. Hillis, and myself, Elijah Martin. The girls’ team has five seniors including Kennedy Thorpe, Faith Helvie, Laura Nebrera llisastigui, Marta Specchi, Catarina Lemos. These athletes are planning to lead their teams to a successful and enjoyable season. The track teams have many returners from last year, but also they have many freshmen who hope to excel in their events.
The boys’ head coach, Matthew Benner, is in his fifth year at Lewis Cass, but he has been a track coach for eighteen years. As a head coach, you have to have goals for all of your athletes. Benner had this to say about his athletes, “Our goals are for them to learn as much as they can about the sport this year so that we can be competitive over the next couple of years. We would like to be top two at the county meet, top three at the TRC meet, and top three at Sectional.” The track team has only four seniors and three of them are not returners, but those three seniors are successful athletes in the school. Benner also said this about the roster, “The numbers are good. We are right around 30 athletes, so that should give us some depth in all of the events.”
On this roster, there are many athletes with the potential to succeed this year. Benner said, ”This could be a good year for Kale Skiles in the two-mile and Ben Jay in the mile. Overall, our distance program should pick up where it left off during cross country season. Our sprinters are young which makes it tough when competing against seniors, but I suspect that they will surprise some people. Julian Levine barely missed the regional meet in the high jump last year. I expect that he will make huge growth in his sophomore year. Coach Jones always has good throwers. Nick Park has been throwing well, and we’ve added Eli Martin who should be able to throw. We’ve also got freshman, Braydon Woolever, who finished fourth in the junior high state meet last year in the discus. There will be several kids who will surprise us in the weeks to come that I haven’t named. Check back then and you’ll hear about some of their great achievements.”
Lewis Cass School Corporation and the track team endured the loss of Gavin Griffin in the fall. Boys’ head coach Matthew Benner said, “Even though Gavin was only a freshman last year, he contributed a great deal of competitiveness to this team. You don’t just pick up and move on from something like that. He will be missed every time we take to the track. We will continue to wear the patches we designed during cross country and we are looking at other ways to honor our friend and teammate. We want to be respectful of the family and not take away from the accomplishments of Aftin and the rest of his teammates as well.” Not only is the boys’ team going to honor Gavin but the girls are as well. Girls head coach, Megan Mannering, replied, “The Griffin family is sponsoring the Long Jump this year, so we will honor Gavin’s love of long jump there. We also will continue to talk about mental health and suicide prevention. We have started using an app called Status Strong, a free app, that helps you track your mental health. It is also shareable, so the girls can share it with me, their friends, and their guardians so others can check on them.”
The girls’ head coach, Megan Mannering, has begun the start of her third year as head coach. Mannering said her goals are, “Our goals as a team are to win more duel meets than previous years and do well in our new TRC conference. It is too early to tell how we will shape up in the new conference without a meet under our belt. I have goals for the girls as their coach too. I believe we can win the Cass County meet, and advance more (girls) to the Regional meet this year, and I want to see every single girl set a new personal record this year.” Most returners for the girls’ team are distant runners and have fewer sprinters. Megan Mannering said, “It may appear we have more distance runners after this past season’s cross country season. However, many of those girls are not distance runners in the track and field season, here is a breakdown of some of those girls. Aftin Griffin is a sprinter and has already broken her indoor 400 record, again! Anna Hedrick is a strong sprinter, relay member, and jumper for us. Sophie Holmquiest and Lexi Alford are hurdlers. Brystallin Gillem is a sprinter and high jumper. Bianca Panmei is a high jumper and looks great after her season of basketball. Maddie and Morgan Leicht are throwers for us and are already improving after a season of swimming. Faith Helvie and Isabelle See join us for their first season and will both be sprinting. Gracie Spicer, Laura Nebrera, and Kennedy Thorpe are our distance runners. All three have great potential to help us out this track season in those longer distances! I would really like to shout out Gracie, Kennedy, and Laura as they have to do a lot of running on their own and they have already done a tremendous job of getting the job done!”
The boys’ and girls’ schedules have made many changes for this upcoming season. Both teams will have the same schedule because they compete co-ed. Mannering said, “We made several changes to the schedule. When the decision was made to switch conferences, we worked hard to get more conference schools for dual/tri meets. In addition, we have a good healthy rivalry with Pioneer, so we had hoped to add them and were able to get this accomplished. One other big change is we added a competitive relay meet for our Saturdays in April, the Eastern Relays.”
Girls’ team senior returner, Kennedy Thorpe, said, “My personal goals are to get a new PR in the two mile and mile. I want to enjoy my senior year and make lots of fun memories for my last sports season.” Thorpe is returning as a distance runner. She competes in the one-mile and the two-mile. Through the four years of running, Thorpe says her favorite memories are, “My favorite part of track is the friends that I have made. We also do theme Thursdays where the team dresses up for practice. I also love home meets when it’s warm out.”
If you enjoy watching and supporting your Lewis Cass athletes come out to a couple of meets on the track to watch the athletes compete. The first meet is April 2 against Twin Lakes, and Pioneer. Come out and support your Kings!
