The track team this spring has gotten many new athletes who have come from a different sport to run track. Juniors, Ethan Tremblay, Julia Boyle and Liam Murray, for example, quit lacrosse and softball and joined the track team.

These athletes have decided that it is better for them to do track in order to better themselves as a runner to improve in other sports.

When asked why Tremblay quit playing lacrosse he stated, “Originally, I didn’t quit lacrosse for track. I quit because I didn’t love playing lacrosse anymore.”

The reason he joined the track team was, “I thought why go home every day and just chill when I could work towards getting better at football, and an easy way to make me faster would be track, so that pretty much sums up why I did it.”

Junior Julia Boyle felt similar to Tremblay as to why she stopped playing softball and joined track.

Boyle said that she, “really loved playing softball,” but she knew that running track would help her to “build up speed in track to help with soccer.”

Murray quit lacrosse in order to gain more time to do track and cross country.

“I quit lacrosse because I started to realize that it would be better for me to fully commit to track,” Murray said. “Since I was already in cross country and winter track, I didn’t really like how lacrosse was a break from running. It makes more sense to focus on one thing to be good at, than two to be mediocre at.”

When Murray was asked if he feels as though he bonded more as a team when he played lacrosse or ran track he said, “It’s hard for me to say I bonded with either one better because I bonded with both of them pretty well,” he said. “However, track is overall a more friendly community that I have spent far more time with. Practice at track is far longer and when you do multiple seasons you end up getting to know the team a lot better.”

Triton High School Track coach Joseph Colbert was also asked about his opinion on the topic.

“Athletes from other sports should consider running track in the season when they’re not doing their sport because track will make you faster, and there really isn’t a sport where speed isn’t important.”

Colbert also spoke out on the benefits of track. “Track can make you more agile, it can make you able to jump higher, or further, it can make you stronger. Many athletes all over the country use track as a way to get ready for their sport.”

Colbert also addressed the misconceptions there are about track taking athletes from other sports. “Kids sometimes choose to leave their team to go to track. What people don’t realize is that it happens the other way too. Kids leave the track team all the time to go to other sports. As far as I’m concerned that’s totally fine.”