Andover Boys Track & Field raced Juniors against Seniors and
Post-Grduates in its competition this Saturday.
Andover Boys Track & Field started its season with a close win against Deerfield 79-66. Though this year’s team consists of mostly new lowerclassmen, for many many returning athletes, this was the first meet in over a year.
According to Co-Captain Zachary Moynihan ’21, this meet was an opportunity for the team to gauge its weaknesses and strengths and have an overall better assessment of all the athletes.
Moynihan said, “I feel like the win wasn’t the most important part, but getting back on the track with most of the team for the first time in over a year. I feel like winning was one of our lowest priorities, it was really to get reacquainted with the events and reacquainted with each other. That was the best part of the meet on Saturday.”
Moynihan was impressed by how less experienced athletes performed last Saturday, such as Daniel Bae ’23, who won long jump at his first Andover track meet with a jump of 19-03.25, nearly a foot further than second place.
“Someone that I was really impressed with was Daniel Bae, he’s new to the team and he ended winning long jump, which was really impressive for a newcomer and I’m excited to see what he has in store for the rest of the season and seasons to come,” said Moynihan.
According to Bae, his success was very much supported by older athletes on the team, including Moynihan.
Bae said, “They did a great job. Especially Zach Moynihan… They really helped me figure out where to go to check in, the strategy of when should I do this event, how should I do this event, how I should warm up, all of that stuff.”
Fritz Lalley PG’21 placed second in the 800-Meter Race with a time of 2:08.16, followed by Max Huang ’24, another Junior who made a debut against Deerfield, with a time of 2:09.29. According to Huang, something he kept in mind during the race was to be confident that his hard work would pay off.
Huang said, “It was definitely a little frightening—I’m not tall either, so they were a lot bigger than I realized. I’ve been training very hard for a while, so among Seniors and PGs, I knew personally I could do pretty well, so I just tried to be confident in my own race. The Seniors and PGs also pushed me a lot during the race because I look up to a lot of people who are older than me who are really fast, so I was just trying to stick with them for as long as I could.”
According to Moynihan, it was really gratifying to see his team back on the track competing like in past years.
“[A word I would use to describe my thoughts about the meet would be] dynamic. After just three weeks of practice, it honestly felt like we never left the track, like we hadn’t been gone for fourteen months. Looking around, it felt like we were back to normal, which was a great experience,” said Moynihan.
Andover Boys Track & Field is scheduled to face off against Exeter on Saturday, May 15.
