As spring sports take off here at Madison High School, the girls’ and boys’ track teams bring home a win from their first meet of the season on Tuesday, April 4th against Morristown Beard. The team, boasting many talented athletes, is looking forward to a successful year filled with many more wins. During the Madison High School media day, seven members of the team joined the Dodger Media Online crew to provide insight into what the season might look like this year.

As one of the most popular spring sports with over 100 members, the coaches have no problem finding enough runners for each event. However, you might think with that many runners that being able to properly train each athlete might be a problem, but the senior representatives from the team, including Michael Keller, Henrik Hamilton, Morgan Araya, Kate McElvany, and Liz Kulesa assured reporters that the size of their team has no effect on the productiveness of their practices. Each athlete is able to put in the work to improve. Clearly, their work is paying off.

The team obviously hopes to bring home many more wins as the season progresses, but the biggest goal for the team as a whole is to beat their rival, Parsippany Hills. Michael Keller, senior runner, shared that the Parsippany Hills athletes are some of the “stiffest competition” they will face all year. With that being said, our track athletes offer some serious competition themselves.

In attendance on media day was junior athlete Ella Tucker, a Madison High School record holder. Tucker holds 3 records in the 100 meter, 200 meter, and 400 meter events. As a junior, Tucker still has the remainder of this season and her senior season to improve upon these records. While speaking on media day, Tucker shared that she is without a doubt working on shedding time from her personal records and is always looking to improve. With a runner as driven and dedicated as Ella Tucker, the track and field team will have no issue beating Parsippany Hills this year.

Beyond the track, Madison is strong in field events as well. Madison will look to Andreas Panagos, Henrik Hamilton, CJ Merson and  Maggie Kim to score points in the field events, as well as long jumpers Nina Tadano and Greg Bruno. The head coaches, Carroll and DeGenero, expect to have a competitive and successful track season.