“Track and field is a little bit different from other sports. So many of its events are individual. Sprint. Long jump. Pole vault. Hammer toss. And so on. You’re competing individually, but you’re obviously also part of a team, striving together for a team win. So part of my work at the beginning of every season is doing some team bonding. Tonight we’re all going bowling. We’ve also created a team crest. Whatever it takes to get the kids gelling as quickly as possible.”

So says Tim Mack: Track & Field Program Manager and Head Coach, Vertical and Horizontal Jumps, at SPIRE Academy; and also a gold medalist in the pole vault at the 2004 Summer Olympics. Of course, bowling isn’t the only way to efficiently build team spirit. Good old-fashioned training can work wonders in that department, too, and there’s been no shortage of that this year. Coach Mack: “We took it relatively easy on them the first three weeks, trying to get them used to balancing athletics and academics. Now we’re turning up the intensity level, with training that goes beyond the basics and gets into each athlete’s more individualized skillset. This week I had a Halloween jumps competition. Some of the kids dressed up. It helped me see where they were at, in terms of their skills. So that was fun and purposeful bonding.”

As for competing, that’s another thing on Coach Mack’s mind in this critical preseason time. Anyone who’s played a sport at a higher level knows there are two components to success: training and competing. You train so that your body has the base capability to perform, whether that means the proper amount of strength, agility, dexterity, etc. But then there’s competing, putting your well-conditioned body (and brain!) to the test in a game, meet, or match. As such, Coach Mack is intensely aware of the need to make sure his student athletes keep their competing-skills sharp. “We’ve been training for two months straight already. So now everyone’s used to that aspect of their sport, but they may have lost the ability to compete. It’s a perishable skill, like anything else. To allow everyone to compete on an equal level, I’ve developed a handicap system. This allows girls and boys to compete against each other, which not only gets them competing on a regular basis but also allows me to further evaluate their skill levels.” 

Of course, no one attends a school like SPIRE without being eager to compete. It’s an all-in mindset. It has to be. These student athletes are balancing a serious amount of sport with an equally serious amount of academics. “In some sense, Coach Mack and I are just offering guidance,” says Kerron Stewart, Head Coach of Sprints at SPIRE, and a silver and bronze medal winning sprinter in the 2008 Summer Olympics. “The kids that are here? They really want to be here. They just need someone to believe in them, to commit to them with the same intensity they’ve committed to themselves. Also, many of our student athletes are from other states, or even other countries! That’s not easy. Everyone here has made a big sacrifice to leave what’s comfortable, to trust in ‘The SPIRE Way’ to help them achieve their dreams.”

SPIRE’s track-and-field program continues to grow in size (numbers have doubled since last year) as well as talent. Track and field at a high level is given more attention outside of the U.S., but participation at the club level is huge here in the States. It’s up to SPIRE to draw all this talent in. Both coaches feel they’re on the right track in that regard. Coach Mack: “Over time, SPIRE’s reputation as a force in high school track and field is only going to grow. We have kids doing remarkable stuff. Annie MacDonald is that rare thing: the dual-sport athlete. On the track-and-field side she throws; she also plays basketball. Then there’s Brooklyn Taylor. She hasn’t been running for long but she’s been able to learn two of the hardest events—hurdles and the triple jump—in record time. Those are just two examples. I could go on. I expect more and more talent, raw or refined, to keep coming to SPIRE. I can’t wait for the season to start.”