By KRISTEN KIRLTEY
Assistant Editor
Men’s track is making history at Northwestern.
For the first time in 27 years, men’s track now has a team again. 1996 was the last time the men had a track team, and they were back to back OIC champions.
“I’m really excited for the entire team to have the opportunity to compete and create history,” said Derrick Young, the head men’s track and field coach.
This is Coach Young’s first year as a head coach at Northwestern. Before this, he was the assistant coach for the women’s track team for two seasons. Young said that some of his goals as a coach are to lay the foundation of the team properly and to win a conference championship.
“It’s humbling,” Young said. “It’s a blessing to be able to start from scratch, have the opportunity to make an impact and to be able to compete for a conference championship in the first season back.”
Young gave a shout out to President Hannaford, athletic director Brad Franz, university administration, faculty, staff and the community of Alva for their support.
“This is bigger than us,” Young said. “This is about the town and the entire university.”
The men’s cross country team’s pre-season ranking is 6/8; the women’s ranking is 10/12.
“The goal for both the men and women teams is to do better than predicted as far as pre-season rankings,” said Sterlin Broomfield, head men’s and women’s cross country coach. “I think that both teams have the talent to perform better than what they predicted us to finish in the conference.”
Broomfield is from Wichita, Kansas, and this is his first year as head coach. Before this, he was assistant coach for two years, a volunteer assistant for one year and a grad assistant for two years. He also ran at Northwestern for two years.
Broomfield said that the men’s team is shooting for top 3-4 and the women’s team is shooting for top 7. He mentioned that his other goals are for both teams to be better than they were last year and for both of them to win a few meets.
Broomfield explained that the women’s team has 18 members and six of them are returners. The men’s team has 10 returners and 20 new team members, giving them a total of 30 members.
The women’s track team is in pre-season right now.
“We’re taking this time to readdress technique and good posture,” said Jill Lancaster, head women’s track and field coach. “Everybody’s training hard, but our goal is to train smarter.”
Lancaster explained that although the team was forced to regroup after Covid-19, the team performed well and competed with some of the top teams in the conference last season.
“It’s a good motivation that we did as well as we did, but we know we left some points on the table and we’re ready to go get them,” Lancaster said.
Lancaster gave a shout out to members of the team that weathered Covid-19 and continued competing. She said they are great leaders for the younger members of the team.
Another goal she mentioned was achieving the Academic All-American again this year.
“We hold our academics to a high standard,” Lancaster said. “We’re going to go after it again.”
