State High Track and Field has been performing incredibly well this season, and its home meet against Chambersburg was no exception. In its second home meet on Apr. 13, 2023, the team faced down Chambersburg, narrowly losing the meet despite strong individual performances and personal records.

Neil Maguire, a junior on the team, showed great excitement leading up to the meet. “My event is the 4x800m, which I haven’t done yet before. I love the intensiveness and excitement of that race, it’s really a lot of fun. I’m super excited,” he said. Maguire went on to perform very well in his event, with a time of 2:18 in the 800m.

While the team lost the overall meet, many people were excited to perform as well as they did, with many personal and even a school record being broken. Jesse Myers, a sophomore, tied the school’s previous record for the 100m sprint in 10.63 seconds.

Team captain Adam Lieb was very impressed with both individual performances and the team as a whole. “We had a lot of really, really, good breakthroughs, especially in the underclassmen and JV,” he said. Lieb is enthusiastic for the rest of the season. “The fact that we had these breakthroughs so early in the season is a good sign for our trajectory… later in the season, when a lot of teams start to lose steam, that’s when State High is best at locking in and performing our best.” Lieb himself ran the 800m, 200m, and 4x400m, getting a personal best time of 2:04 in the 800m.

Another team captain, Salahuddin Abdul-Hamid, believes that the team did very well, but that there are also multiple areas to improve in. “There were a few points where we definitely could have improved, we just barely got beat by the other team, but overall we did a great job of supporting each other this meet, and can’t wait for more,” he said. 

Keeping a positive attitude and team spirit as a captain is a crucial part of being a team captain according to Abdul-Hamid. “You stop seeing yourself as a track runner, you start seeing yourself as a part of the track team. Part of the whole group,” he said, “We showed great aggression that meet, and we’ll show even more as we go forward.”  

Abdul-Hamid is not the only one who believes that teamwork is part of the reason the team does so well. Maguire finds that the togetherness and group spirit helps him perform better. “I’m not just running to run, I’m doing it so the team can do well,” Maguire said. He believes the accountability holds him and the rest of the team to a high standard.

Despite losing this meet, hopes are high for the rest of State High Track and Field’s season, as they push forward and continue to go nowhere but up.