The Aplington-Parkersburg boys track & field program has begun preseason practices. Jason Berkey is serving as the interim head coach after longtime head coach Mark Haren stepped down at the end of last season.
The Falcons have two student-athletes with state meet experience, including Sully Janssen and Trevan Thomas as members of last year’s 4×400 and 4×800 relays. But Berkey says the addition of dual-sport athletes in the district is helping with depth.
“I think we’ll be good in the middle distance, the fours, eights, and the mile, think our depth there is going to be extremely deep,” Berkey says. “Some of those middle distance runners got some range where they can run some 100s and 200s for us. Some of our younger kids, our freshmen and sophomore kids that hadn’t been out, and then some of the incoming freshmen are really surprising me and doing a really good job. And like I said, I think we’ve got really good team depth, and I really like where we’re at right now a couple weeks into the season.”
Berkey says they’ll need to gain some ground in the field events.
“I think our discus will be strong. We’re working on shot put, replacing Kael Stotler, we do have a couple kids back that did score a few points. Maison Copp scored a few points for us last year, and expecting some big things out of him. And I’m working on a couple other kids that are giving it a try to see what we can do there. Then long jump and high jump, we have some kids that are dual sporting that I think would be very good at the high jump and long jump.”
The team’s first competition will be at Grundy Center on Tuesday, April 8.
