Coming off last year’s State Championship win, the track and field team looks to run it back and win back-to-back titles.

Last season was the first time in school history that the track and field team managed to win a State Championship meet, and now they want more as “When you win a state title, [it] probably raises your standard at least your thought process for what you can be on a yearly basis,” Coach Casey Popenfoose said.

The mindset of the track and field team to get them where they are today has been simply to “beat your seed and outperform where you’re supposed to be because if everyone outperforms where they’re supposed to be, we’ll always score way more points than we’re projected to.” This mindset has allowed them to do things that everyone else did not think they could, including winning the state championship over Carmel a year ago.

This season has had a number of hardships from weather issues which has led to most of the JV meets getting canceled this season. Despite this, “they’ve been pretty resilient,” Popenfoose said. Along with the weather being a major challenge for the Bulldogs, they have also suffered injuries to a couple of their varsity runners. These varsity runners had to get replaced by JV runners who did not have a lot of experience in the varsity spotlight. “I don’t think we handled it well early on,” Popenfoose said. However, they began to realize “You can take the reins, and you can compete at a high level. Don’t worry about things you can’t control. Just worry about competing really hard.” Popenfoose said.