Team dynamics

When you think of track, team sport doesn’t usually come to mind. Why? Is it because almost every event is individualized? Well I used to not feel as though it was a team sport, well I thought I did but I hadn’t realized what a team was. In high school I ran track for 4 years. Cross country, indoor track, and outdoor track, 3 seasons of sports every year. Each year I found myself making a strong bond with only about 3 or 4 of my teammates at a time. This was because we were the relay team. Some of my fondest memories from high school track were from the relay team my sophomore year. I felt this way because this group was the small part my high school team that was there to run. The ones that had the will to do what it took. My senior year I found myself without this group. Although my team had over 150 runners, I found myself to be the only one that was truly dedicated to track, and I couldn’t form my group of friends that had formed in years past. When I was looking at schools Wheaton stood out among the rest a lot for me because of its track team. When I came here I realized what a team really was. In high school the team was maybe made up of 10 kids, men and women combined. Sure, there were +150 runners in the program, but they were there because it was somewhere to be. Here at Wheaton I realized, everyone that was here wanted to be here because they wanted to run. They wanted to run on a team with other athletes as dedicated to the sport as they were. A track team is made up of dedicated, hard-working, with a common goal in sight. My high school team had no goal. My senior year, in my district championship meet, I had what was probably the most heart breaking moment of my track career. I heard the overall scores announced and our women’s team had won the championship, and the men’s team had come in 5^th place. Correction, I had come in 5^th place. I was the only person to score points on my team. I watched as the women jumped up and down screaming grabbing their trophy and even how the winning mens team did the same. I saw maybe one or two men on my team who were disappointed that we lost. It nearly made me cry, because I realized that the girls were a true team, and out of my 4 years and 12 seasons of running, I had and never would experience that in high school. I nearly gave up on track which had become the center of my life throughout school, and I was only going to try and use track to get into school and not take it seriously once I got there. That was until I visited this school and found a true team that I could be a part of.