On Friday, March 10, the boys track and field team competed in a NLCC Conference matchup against every school in the conference. Grayslake North finished in second place with a score of 98 while the winner, Grayslake Central, finished with a score of 171.

“My number one goal was to really see growth in my athletes, not only in their times, their distances, and their heights but also in their character. Other than that, beating (Grayslake) Central would be nice,” said Coach Tyler Woolard.

When you have a team, you usually have a weakness, something that the team needs to work on so that they can succeed as a whole. Woolard says he wants to increase the number of athletes in track and field so that they can have more distance runners and fill out some of the roster spots.

“I am still trying to work on a few people in particular. We recruit with the help of some coaches, and we try to go to other sports in the fall and winter to try and generate some interest in the sport of track. It’s not like baseball where they’ve been playing since the age of three or whatever, so it has to be shown to the kids that this is a sport and there is value in it. Other than that, I do try and make an effort to get my athletes out for their friends to come out for track,” Woolard said.

Senior Jashvanth Tamil Nambi competes in the 4×2, 60-meter dash, and 400-meter dash. “Personally, it wasn’t my best. I ran a 24.06 200, and ran a 26.05. I don’t know. I just feel like that track’s curves weren’t it for me, but I feel like overall as a team we had some really great people: Zach (Weignenant) winning all his events, Nathan Alfaro getting the school record, beating his school record. So I feel like overall as a team we didn’t do as good as we thought we would. I feel like we definitely underestimated Central a lot, and in the next outdoor conference meet, we’ll definitely try to get them,” Tamil Nambi said.

Senior Owen Davies completes in the 4×8, 800, 400, and 4×4. He says that during the Conference he would have liked to do better, but he got second place so it really doesn’t matter to him.

“I did alright timewise, but I would have liked to have done better. But I got second place, so really it doesn’t matter,” Davies said.

When asked what he thinks the team could have done to win against Central, he said that the team overall needs to work on their availability and making sure they aren’t backing out of races they can run, but overall he believes they did a good job.

“I think we just got to work on our availability and making sure we aren’t backing out of races we can run. And making sure we got to run when numbers were called. But, yeah, I thought we did a good job overall,” Davies said.