Girls track and field go to Oregon

Because of Covid-19, for the past few years girls Track and Field put a pause on traveling. Before the pandemic,  the team had taken multiple trips all across the west and east coasts including places like Arizona and West Virginia. This year the team was invited to the 2022 Oregon Relays hosted at the University of Oregon.

Freshman Veronica Znajda and Sophie Fransen, sophomores Bridget Derengowski and Lily Ginsberg, juniors Hailey Erickson and Cameron Kalaway, and senior Audrey Ginsberg all prepared for their travels on April 21st. Girls track and field coach, Peter Wintermute, was thankful for how supportive the district and school were of this great opportunity. 

Because the school-sponsored the travels of the team, they flew and stayed in the same hotel which gave them a lot of bonding time. In the team’s free time they visited the Nike campus as well as ran the Pre’s trail. Pre’s trail is a popular training track that is also referred to as “Tracktown USA”. The trail has a nature setting with a distance of 3.8 miles. The trail is flooded with many cross country or track athletes, one team seen here often is the University of Oregon track team. Though Wintermute is unsure if they will be invited to this event again, he believes it was a great experience. 

“It’s just one of those things, it felt like a need to jump on an opportunity because who knows if something like this will come up again,” Wintermute said. 

The track the girls ran at is a dream spot in the runners’ world. Hayward Field is a $270 million dollar investment at the University of Oregon. Hayward Field is seen as the mecca of track and cross country. It is often used for D1 collegiate meets as well as they will be hosting the summer championships which is the Olympics off-season. “All we have wanted to do is run at that specific track and we finally got to,” Fransen said.

This event was very successful for the girls who ran. Audrey and Lily Ginsberg, Kalaway, and Erickson placed 5th in the Distance Medley Relay. The DMR is made up of a 1200-meter leg, 400-meter leg, 800-meter leg, and 1600 meter leg. They finished with a time of 12:01.67. Fransen also had a favorable outcome with her event, the 3000 meters. Fransen placed 16 out of 29 girls from across the nation. Most impressively, she had a new personal record of 11:01.43 beating her old time by 15 seconds. No doubt this trip was a memorable experience for all who were involved.