Inspired by her older brother, former Track and Field Co-Captain Daniel Bae ’23, Sarah Bae ’26 officially started her journey with track in her Junior year at Andover, having prior exposure to running throughout middle school. Bae, who primarily runs hurdles events, strives to lead through humility and positivity.
Bae seeks to act as a role model to her teammates by, for example, prioritizing sufficient recovery, aiming to inspire them to do the same. Alongside her Co-Captains, throughout the Fall Term, Bae regularly held workouts and, this Winter Term, hopes to hold captain-led practices on weekends to get her teammates primed for competition.
“I motivate the team by just setting an example, like taking pre-meet and recovery seriously and then putting in the time on weekends to adequately warm up and do workouts that are captain-led,” said Bae.
Off the track, Bae is a Blue Key Head, and with the team this season composed of more than 150 members, Caitlin Ly ’27 highlighted that Bae’s energy and high spirits set her apart as a leader. Bae actively works to be a warm presence on the team, cheering everyone on regardless of their experience.
“She’s always talking to others in warmups and trying to get to know everyone and she is able to make the environment very welcoming and comfortable, especially for the newcomers. She is super supportive and always cheering on everybody. It’s nice to have a loud voice cheering on the team, especially through some harder workouts as well as meets,” said Ly
Oftentimes, Bae believes, workouts can be rough, but as a Co-Captain, she strives to push the team with humility and lightheartedness.
“I try to lead with humor or lightheartedness because a lot of time, the track workouts, they’re pretty awful, and people need some positivity or some humor to get through them,” said Bae
A friendly face both inside the track and outside the track, Jenna Robertson-Palmer ’27 highlighted a noted one of Bae’s key qualities as a Co-Captain, which lay in her efforts to foster an uplifting and friendly team culture.
“Sarah’s best qualities as a captain are always leading with confidence and positivity, which are both very contagious qualities to have. Sarah’s a great captain because she not only leads by example through her hard work, but she’s also just a very positive and friendly person that you can approach. She’s a very approachable person in general. She’s a great captain because she holds herself to such high standards, but also helps her teammates and the people around her to be better,” said Robertson-Palmer.
Robertson-Palmer gives insight into a moment where Bae, even when many people were nervous, took the lead in order to turn a stressful moment into a memorable, light-hearted one. She especially highlights that Bae’s love for track and field motivates less experienced runners to be confident.
“We’ve recently had a time trial for track and a lot of people were nervous about it, but Sarah was one of the first people to go and she really led with confidence and more enthusiasm and showed the fun part about this time trial. Overall you can just really tell that she loves running when she’s on the track, and that energy is contagious. Seeing her going out there and having fun and not being as nervous or as stressed on the track inspired a lot of people on the team. It’s a really good example to have for our younger runners on the team, or maybe people that haven’t done track as much as our newer runners.” said Robertson-Palmer.
