After a month of training, the Green Hope Indoor Track and Field team finally made their season debut, traveling to JDL Fast Track on Dec. 1 for the Polar Express meet. There were a multitude of top five performances from the boys, with Dax Mahone (‘24) winning the 1600m and the 4x400m relay with Cameron Gregg (‘24), Seamus O’Driscoll (‘25) and Sebastian Percival Shim (‘24). The girls team had strong performances, with many top five finishes and two first place finishes in the triple jump and long jump by Ivana Gomez (‘25).

O’Driscoll ran both the 1000m and the 4x400m. He says, “[I] felt terrible,” while running the 1000m as he is not, “in good shape this early [into] the season, but the 4×400 was pretty slight as we didn’t really have any competition.” In future meets he hopes to be able to run the 4x800m, as he specializes in mid-distance events. O’Driscoll plans to continue training to get in shape and continue dropping his times, hoping to end the season with a 4:25 mile and a 2:35 1000m.

Tommy Dunn (‘24) also competed at the meet, running the 1600m. He earned a career personal record (PR) with a time of 5:05.99, placing fifth in his heat. Dunn said, “It felt great getting a PR because [it has] been a while since my last PR and I was also facing some difficult obstacles, like loose laces.” He hopes to continue running the 1600m, progressively dropping his times until he reaches his season goal of a sub five minute 1600m.

As the season continues, many runners plan to implement more training into their routines, getting in shape to run lower times. Through higher mileage, more intense workouts and faster paces, runners hope to reach the state qualifying standards.