Kile Krol

March 28, 2005

The outdoor season is finally upon us. I am from an area (Illinois) where we do not have a serious nor long indoor track season, which made indoors a struggle for me. The season seemed to drag on forever. However, some good things came out of the indoor season.

Many people performed very well at UAA's in New York at the Armory. It was pretty awesome to get the chance to run at such a historical place. The brightest spot of the indoor season was from our women's DMR team, making it to nationals and just missing All-America honors.

The outdoor season was kicked off with the Emory Invitational here at our own track. The Emory Invite happened to fall the first weekend after our spring break making things a little interesting for some of us competitors. Coming back from Cancun, Bahamas, or any other such place really took the legs out of some of our teammates.

However, it was refreshing to finally start running outside, and even nicer to have a meet at our own track. It was the first time I personally have gotten to participate in the Emory Invite because of the construction on the WoodPEC last year.

The team has really been getting closer compared to the beginning of this year. With the bulk of our seniors and point scorers graduating last year, the team was kind of left in disarray. Senior captains Blake Staub, Andrew Seidenberg, and Andrew (Podge) Podgurski have really made an effort to bring the team closer together.

There seems to always be a gap between the distance runners and sprinters in most teams and there was with ours at first. Now we warm up together and have gotten a chance to know everyone. It is nice to have support from your entire team instead of just one-third of your team.

This is one reason why I personally love track so much. In cross country there is a team bond that is created because you go through the same experiences and have the exact same goals and run the same race. In track there are so many different types of people it is amazing. It brings a lot of people together that normally would never want anything to do with each other.

I generally do not like big strong guys that think they are tough, but Stan and Drew are two of my favorite people on the team, and they are big, strong throwers. When Stan speaks to me in Russian, I can not stop laughing.

I would probably keep my distance from Brian Platt if I did not run with him and get the chance to know him, but it turns out he is a cool sprinter. A lot of times people surprise you and Emory track allows you to be surprised with some of the great people you meet.

What is interesting about this outdoor season is that we only have four meets until the conference meet in St. Louis, and one is already down. There are six weeks left in school.

Needless to say there is little time or room for error if we want to reach any of our goals. UAA's and nationals are the two biggest meets for Emory track, and the goal is to perform our best at UAA's and qualify many people for nationals. Time is ticking for us.

Kile Krol is a sophomore from Moline, Ill. He would love to answer e-mail questions from Emory recruits and fans.