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The NS track team is competing at state today and tomorrow at BYU, and they finished region at Carbon on May 7, where many qualified for state.
The team has 13 athletes competing at state, with ten of those athletes having qualified in more than one event.
Senior Jaden Bowles is ranked 3rd in both the 300m hurdles and the 110m hurdles and has confidence he can be a state champion despite a 2nd place finish at region.
“I have competition, but I feel like I can get it,” Bowles said.
Another standout athlete is senior Madi Johansen, who started throwing javelin this year and has already exceeded expectations. On Johansen’s birthday she competed at a meet in Delta where she broke the school javelin record. She threw 113’ 02”, beating the original school record held by Heather Pyper throwing 112’ 11”.
“I was thinking I feel good about this one, and then I threw it and it went really far,” Johansen said. “We were sitting there listening to all of the distances being announced and they announced mine. I needed to get a 112, at least. and so I jumped up and down.”
Rodger Miner was also a new coach introduced this year for the javelin throwers, and with over 10 years of experience, he is a valuable asset for the team.
“Rodger’s a GOAT. He’s basically taught me everything I need to know,” Johansen said.
Many on the track team this year have felt that this year has been a lot more positive, coming from the new coaches introduced this year, head coach Brett Madsen and assistant coach Jenna Madsen.
“Amazing coaches, overall the program has been healthier and stronger,” sophomore Billie Bowles said.
Many on the team find the environment very positive and also have had a lot of fun this year compared to years past.
“It feels like they care, they come to watch and record my races, they make it fun,” Jaden Bowles said.
Coach Madsen is trying to find more solutions to compete and maybe win a region championship.
“I was a little disappointed with the turnout we had as far as athletes,” Madsen said. “I’m helping coach with the football program. We’re going to kinda piggyback the football program, if we can get athletes to compete and become faster it’s only gonna make them better football players. I think coach Peck, with him being the football coach, he’s gonna change the culture within the boys side of things.”
Madsen is hoping next year some football players will come over to run track, gaining more athletes on the track team, especially boys.
Madsen is preparing for next season by using what he’s learned this year and helping improve for next year.
“If I could get them in the weight room in January, we could start working, getting our bodies in shape, doing a lot of things to prevent shin splints because we had a lot of shin splints this year. So if we can prevent those starting in January and then by time track season rolls around, we are athletic, we’re flexible, we’re explosive. We are not gonna deal with [that] influence because we prevented them. I can see that being a huge help and for one, we’re gonna compete better,” Madsen said.
Fawn Bowles, the head coach of the hurdlers, has had many plans similar to Madsen. Mostly focusing on the improvement of her athletes.
“I’m gonna really push the winter training and even possibly some winter track meets. If I can get a couple of them to go to some winter track, we might have an even stronger season next year. Really preparing, just do it a lot more than the off season. Even just like weight training, like I wanna get on top of really getting some good weight training that Brett was talking about,” Fawn said.
Compared to past years, the track team has a lot of younger faces among the team. This year, the team only had five seniors and 13 juniors, with the sophomore and freshman having a combined 24 athletes.
“I know we’ve got a lot of freshmen and incoming freshmen that will participate in track and then the freshmen that we do have now give us a couple of years and we’ll be competing,” Madsen said.
