Starting her running career with Outdoor Track her Junior spring, Girls Co-Captain Patricia Tran ʼ24 grew from a new runner to a three season Captain. Falling in love with the sport from her experience in Outdoor Track, she has grown to become a leader that sets an example and is a consistent pillar of support.
Tasha Bohorad ʼ26 explained Tran’s leadership and how it contains the perfect amount of honesty while also being a shoulder to lean on.
“Patty (Patricia) is very supportive, but she’s also more reserved, not in the way that you don’t think she cares about you but she’s always very straight forward with you and she’ll check in. She’ll be supportive, but she lets people do their own thing and make their own career which I really like. I’ve known her since the beginning of being at Andover, and I switched to cross country… and she always made me feel included, she would hang out after practice and do core, do push ups, and she’s always a team player,” said Bohorad.
Being a three season Captain between Indoor and Outdoor Track and Cross Country, Tran emphasized the factors that make the Outdoor season special. With a collective goal and better weather each day, a community continues to be fostered which Tran appreciates.
Tran said, “[One] thing that sets Outdoor Track apart is that one, it’s probably the biggest team that we have all year so you get to meet a lot of new faces and then you also have some returning people from Indoor so you get to bond with them but also welcome newcomers to the team. … We also have some of our biggest meets during the outdoor season… The whole season… Our goal is being able to place at [New England Interscholastic Outdoor Track and Field] Interschols so I think everybody is working really hard, using their momentum from Indoor and trying to see what they can do in May. Also just that as the season progresses the weather gets nice, so I think peoples spirits are their highest ever towards the end of the outdoor season.”
According to Bohorad, Tran invests herself into every meet day. She connects with each athlete and cares about the success of teammates.
“Even if she’s injured or she’s not racing… you forget that she’s not racing because she’ll talk to you like she’s competing as well and she really takes everything to heart on meet days and you can tell she really cares about it and about the meet,” said Bohorad.
Lily Williamson ʼ25 highlighted the ways in which Tran is able to make a team with so many different events into one cohesive community. As a long time member of the distance running group along with trying out the javelin event for the first time this season, Tran’s ability lets her traverse all sides of the team to promote unity.
“[She] is influential on both of [distance and javelin] which are oftentimes two different groups that wouldn’t normally interact so she is a paragon of team unity just based on what she does individually in her own events. Also, she just really encourages everyone around her. If there’s someone running either the two mile or the two hundred [meter], she’s there to cheer people on. She’ll go on long runs with us and then spend days doing tech events with the field events, so she is super multi-faceted,” said Williamson.
Reflecting on her last season as an Andover athlete and Captain, Tran looks forward to cherishing the things that built her love for the sport in the first place.
“[What] I’m really gonna embrace is trying to spend as much time with the people that brought me into this sport. Having fun, trying to make the most out of it and spending quality time with the people on the team whether it’s through runs, or during our workouts… or even through post practice dinners, or pre-race brunches, overall just spending quality time with my teammates,” said Tran.
