Flying Feet: The Jamestown Track Team

One of the sports Jamestown is most well-known for is our wonderful track team, and for good reason. While not every school can claim national level runners, Jamestown can and does. To help illustrate the character of the team, we pulled together a few interviews from top athletes of different events to help you see what goes on behind the scenes on the Jamestown track team! 

The first event our reporters visited was the pole vault, where we met with sophomore Tavian Whitney, who is in his first full season on the team. Tavian was influenced to start pole vaulting by Coach Wallace, and he encourages others to look into joining if they are interested. Tavian enjoys the event because of the self-discipline it takes, “Really, it’s about beating yourself, getting better, and just trying to get over the bar. It’s really just small things, details. [You should] just try to focus on them, work on them, and if you can get the one little detail right, it’s so much fun,” An interesting fact about the event is that it requires very few members. Jamestown has nine people in total, which is large for an overall team! If you are concerned about hurting yourself in pole vaulting, feel comforted by this next fun fact. While some poles used to be made out of aluminum, many poles today are made out of carbon fiber hybrids and often bend more. When asked about his favorite memories, Tavian mentioned a recent competition at Christopher Newport University. “There were some really tough winds, and I finally figured out what I was doing wrong, and I’ve been making huge improvements ever since then,” Truly, this event is all about beating your past records and soaring even higher the next time around! 

Next, our reporters moved on to visit with Labron Henderson, who throws both discus and shotput on the team. Although his main sport is football where he plays as the right guard, he is also one of the best throwers. Starting outdoor season of sophomore year, his personal bests include 108 feet in the discus and 50 foot 2 inches in shot put. If you’ve never thrown before, Labron has some helpful tips for you! First of all, the metal ball for shot put is 12 pounds, so it’s very important to use proper technique so you don’t hurt your throwing arm. As he says, “One small mess up would throw out your shoulder,” so learning how to throw the right way is a must. He also recommends watching videos to get a head start on the sport to observe footwork and form for when you are actually throwing. Lastly, if you’ve ever taken an interest in weight lifting, shot put may be the sport for you! While he has been very successful athletically during his time at Jamestown, this is not the end of Labron’s career. Next fall, he plans on playing football and throwing shotput during his time in college. 

While we learned a lot from athletes in the field events, our reporters decided to wrap up our trip out to the track with a stop at the runners. We had the opportunity to speak with senior Emily Dahl who has run both cross country and track since her freshman year of high school. While she was not on a team in middle school, she decided to join the team because of the amount of time you get to spend with friends and others on the team; running is absolutely a communal sport. As the team captain, Emily mainly runs in the 2 mile and the 4×800. Her records include a time of 10:56 in the two mile and 5:12 in the mile, which are very fast times for female high school runners. Emily has absolutely seen the progression of the team over her time at Jamestown. “I feel like when I first started out, there was a pretty big discrepancy between the fastest and the slowest, but now everyone’s getting faster. We’ve built a stronger team,” Emily is not ending her running career here and is planning on running both cross country and track at Holy Cross in college.  

Thank you to the track team for letting our reporters visit for a short afternoon! If you are interested in joining the team, please contact Coach Tompkins. As always, the team welcomes you to their track meets. The next scheduled meet is on May 6th at Bailey Field. Please come out to support the team! 

Edited by: Harrison Davies