Baldwin’s unified track team placed first in their meet facing Belle Vernon and Canon Mac on Wednesday
Senior Kirsten Fohr said the team was delighted when the announcers said, at the end of the meet, that Baldwin had won.
“Normally, we don’t find out who won until a while after the meet,” Fohr said. “But this time, they announced we won at the end, and everyone was super excited.”
Fohr cited an all-around strong performance from Baldwin.
“Honestly, I think Baldwin did pretty well in all of the events, but our 100-meter runs were especially good,” Fohr said.
Junior Nora Eckert agreed that “Baldwin did really well as a whole” but she said the Highlanders performed very strongly in the relay races.
“Our relay team did really well, both our 4x100s and 4x400s,” she said.
Members of the team get scored individually on their race, relay, and field events. Then the scores are added to get the team’s cumulative score, which is used to determine which team won first place. Baldwin placed first with a cumulative score of 126 — one of their best scores yet, Eckert said.
Overall, Eckert said, one member of the team who especially stood out was Din Goawala, who PR’d in one of his events.
“Din did really well at shot put,” she said. “He PR’d, so it was the best throw he’s ever done.”
One thing the team is looking to improve, with championships coming up in May, is endurance, Eckert said.
“None of us are very good at running for a while,” she said. “We can all run fast for like a minute, so definitely endurance.”
Fohr believes that the team could work specifically on the long jump event.
“I think our long jump event could be improved. We don’t have very many kids doing it, and I think we could do a lot better with more people in that event,” Fohr said.
Jumping was one event that Fohr said Belle Vernon had the upper hand in.
“Belle Vernon had more kids jumping, and they were all really good,” Fohr said. “They could jump a lot farther than most of us.”
The team’s next meet is Wednesday against Mt. Pleasant and Canon Mac.
