The North Butler girls track and field team approaches the starting line of the outdoor season with a young group preparing to take on roles at the varsity level.
The Bearcats return three seniors and have 14 underclassmen. Head Coach Collin Freeseman says they’ll face a learning curve.
“We are dominated by sophomores and freshmen, we’re talented, and we’ve got a good mix of distance runners, middle distance runners and sprinters, where we’re gonna fill more events than we probably have in the past,” says Freeseman. “Learning to compete at the high school level for some of these young kids is going to be a little bit eye-opening. They’re competitors, and I think we’re gonna be overall competitive. There’s gonna be a learning process, that starts now. We want to be our best in May. Hopefully by May, we’ve grown up as a team and learned how to compete at that level.”
Freeseman says the return of the state-placing shuttle hurdle relay team will be an event to watch this season.
“Laney Brinkman, sophomore, Alexis Rose is a sophomore, Eliska Sirotiak, those girls had a really good experience last year down at the state track meet where they were part of a shuttle hurdle team that finished seventh in the state. We ran good races and good things happened. When things like that happen, it’s pretty easy to get people excited about doing it again the next year.”
North Butler’s first outdoor meet at Saint Ansgar, was rescheduled to April 8th.