By Addison Brown
Batavia’s Track Program is one of the best in the Dukane Conference. Batavia has won conference championships multiple times over the years. The most recent win was two years ago in 2022, and then Batavia’s JV and varsity won conference championships in indoor track this year (2024).
Batavia’s track coaches are a big reason they have/had so much success.
A reason why Batavia’s track coaches are so good is the way they motivate their athletes before and after meets.
“They use very motivational words like ‘keep going’ and ‘you got it’,” said Erin Barth, a runner on the track team. “They always say encouraging things to us during and before races.”
The coaches try their best to keep their runners motivated and excited to try new things like new races.
The coaches also like to keep things very organized for their practice days. For example, they have certain days for running intervals.
“They keep things very organized. For example, we almost always run intervals on Wednesdays and Mondays,” Barth said, “I like it when they keep things organized like that so I can prepare myself for what practice is going to be like that day.”
The coaches keeping everything organized truly helps the athletes be prepared and ready for practice every day.
Batavia’s track coaches care a lot about their athlete’s health and any type of conditions they have or could get. The coaches care enough to do their research on how to prevent athletes from injuring themselves during the season. They are not allowed to wear certain shoes like Uggs, slides, Crocs, or anything similar to that during the season because it has a higher chance of causing shin splints.
The coaches like to teach new strategies all of the time. They hold meetings before meets to teach some new strategies and to try and calm any of the athlete’s nerves as best as they can.
“They always are trying to teach us new ways to run races and small tweaks to try and make us better in the meetings,” said Bailey Wolfe, a runner on the team.
The track coaches also try their best to maintain a good relationship with their athletes inside and outside of practice. They talk to them if they see them in the hallways or they will hype up the athletes during or after a race.
“Coach Hillman is always there supporting us no matter what and he is just overall very supportive and tells me I did great even if it wasn’t my best race,” Wolfe said, “During the pre-meet meetings it gets a little hectic but all of the coaches are really good at getting everyone excited for the upcoming meet.”
Coaches occasionally force some of the runners to run races that they are not comfortable with or have never run before. When the coaches put them in a race where the runners feel uncomfortable some athletes feel like they typically do not get that much encouragement from the coaches. When the coaches do something like that they do it because they believe in the athlete and they don’t feel like they would need as much encouragement.
The Batavia track coaches are great at keeping the track program put together and successful. They have done an amazing job over the years in making sure Batavia gets a good reputation from the track program.