show all about student athletes also with our guest mr pinto who's currently pierce township high school's indoor outdoor trackage he was also a golf coach but that's for another episode but in this episode we're talking about all the ins and outs of but the four by four hundred and the four by one hundred in the field i've done besides the presence of it in a roof what's the difference between indoor and outdoor track well as you said the name of the one is indoor track so it would be indoors and the other one would be outdoor outdoor track the biggest difference the size of the track itself when you move the track inside a building difficult to dome a four hundred metre track so most of them are two hundred metres it does seem though there are all the places we go some are two hundred we've seen a three hundred we go to one is two hundred twenty nine meters just kind of depends on the amount of space they have available in the building to make the track work can athletes still like all the same offenses they can do in outdoor and indoor track they have the same general events making the track smaller makes everything about it smaller so when outdoor track you mention the one hundred meter dash that's the straightaway if you're looking at like a football  field inside the track isn't that big so the straightaway is not as long so they will do often the fifty five or the sixty meter dash instead just that's how long the straightaways are there is no javelin inside a building there is no discus inside they often do not do the thirty two hundred they do the three thousand for indoors and and usually they do the one mile instead of the six hundred meter run which most people just say interchangeably get out or track anyways i have to go what your next race the mile where they really mean the sixty under me to run it's slightly different by like eleven seven eleven meters  now when it comes to the athletes what's the difference between a normal athlete that plays like soccer hockey or football compared to a track athlete well there's not so much a difference in terms of like the athlete specifically i mean all the athletes are athletes i see a lot of shirts that say like our sport is your sports punishment if you know if they mess up with football or basketball they were going to run tomorrow and that's generally what a lot of us do a track  we have the field component the jumps the throws and so on i mean generally it's different a lot of ways i think the biggest difference in most sports is track and field is predominantly an individual sport where it is you running the one hundred or you running the two mile where football you have the team basketball you have a team soccer it's a little bit different that mindset it's a lot different when you know distance running can be especially when you have to do eight laps around the track you know i mean you've got all the different events going on a different times and the other thing too is there's no real set start two o'clock and two o'clock you know does no countdown you know basketball next there's breaks in between the action a lot of times and so on and so forth so it is it is very different in those aspects compared to team sports most notably turning on the theme of athletes and track i've noticed from personal experience there's a big discrepancy between good athletes and like an average athlete and what do you think makes them so different well i think the big thing with track and field being different in other sports is with track and field and especially outdoor track with a bigger track and hopefully nicer weather being in the spring and being outside we could run more we could do more we could have people you know we might have ten guys run in the hundred meter dash someone can catch it you'll make a wide receiver but you know that those two players have to work together where in track and field you can run your race and you might not be the best runner or the fastest runner in that event but you can improve your time and you can get better for yourself in your race it is yeah it's just not you know we go to those bigger meets what i know we're going to talk about later you take of me to have eighty guys in an invitational one hundred dash only one of them going to win you know i mean only one can win where you have you know a team sport the whole team wins you know you have one individual winning that race the kid who comes in seventy fifth place might have ran his best time in his life and he might be happy as can be and he was seventy fifth you know what i mean so it's very different in that regard and it doesn't really somebody running their hundred meter dash slower than somebody else doesn't penalize the team it doesn't hurt the team and they have that that chance to be a part of the team the track team i think if you get the i mean i've heard i've heard i've had other people other teachers tell me you know i heard the students faster i heard this person did this in middle school and i've talked to them and so on and so forth i guess and you know i've said stuff to kids like you should do track or they i think about doing track we should do it in terms of actively recruiting through the halls and trying to find people i mean i'll mention in passing you should do track and field but as somebody who does track you know if someone's not really into track fracs a tough sport to do if you really don't like it that's true trying to recruit somebody into the sport who may not want to do it might not be the most fun time for them since it is i've difficult sport in that regard of just you know it is you running you know it's true i've always realized in track it's it's always you and i think the mental component because when i did high jump back in middle school i mean i could go jump five four feet something well as you said i mean a lot of sports and a lot of anything is mental if someone tells me before race you know coach i'm not really feeling good today not sure my time i don't really think they're about to run their personal record that day since mentally they already seem like they're not in the race specifically you try to put in the best but mentally i mean with track and field like i said i mean you know one person's going to win and we put thirty kids out there in the mile you know you don't have to win the race to have a good but to have a good race and try to approach it in that regard you don't have to win the triple jump to be the best day for you in that regard in overall training which right a lot of the training so you get better throughout the season goes we want your best time to be your last race we want your best jump to be in the last meet of the year you know we're looking to peak in may when we get to the bigger invitationals and things like that so we try to outline a training program that allows the athletes to continue to get better throughout the year we don't want to have our best race in april when the season goes to memorial day we don't want to have our season plateau in you know march thirty eight march twenty eighth at the south those classic well we've got four more invitations to go we don't want to run that same time over and over and over again we hope to get you know keep improving our time i guess the time we would want to go down john to want to go up but you know just an overall approach to it and like you know like you said mentally try to keep the kids in the right mindset i mean pressure is not always the greatest if you've got to be out there for eight laps thinking about what i do this lap what i do this not how my doing you know me having that even approach to it makes it nicer mentally for the athlete they talk about training their first second how do you train different athletes can say someone has one hundred meter dash and somebody does distance and it's throwing how is the training different for each type of group well i mean a lot of it has to do with what event you're doing i mean obviously you know that you mention the one hundred you're going to sprinters their races and as long as distance don't have to train as far than on the run as far the one hundred meter dash is going to be a lot about the start you know you always have a hundred meters to make up any ground you lose in the first five meters of your start we obviously work on the stars a lot more with sprinters than we do with distance is the start for a distance race important absolutely but if you're ten metres behind when you come out of the break of a thirty two hundred meter race you've got you know thirty one hundred metres to make that up if you're ten years behind to start one hundred meter dash you've got ninety meters to make that up so the little bit of a different a different a different sport and a different event in that regard so you know obviously distance runners run more  they have to do a little more interval training at keeping their top speed at a longer did they do repeat eight hundred they do you know tempo six hundred meter training where you know we'll do repeat to hundreds or repeat for hundreds maybe we'll do a tempo six hundred like the the distance is just a lasso the distance in training becomes less throwers obviously will spend more time lifting all the athletes and the sport generally should lift what they lift and how they lift will be different obviously if you're throwing shop what you want to be is you know strong as possible where you know running the eight hundred meter dash it might not be as important as that event obviously of the technical support of like pole vault where lifting and speed and the whole general technique of pressing that pole vault pole to get over a bar that could be thirteen feet in the air versus a high jump you said high jump you know your technique one day is good you're feeling great you know just in a general like the warming up if you don't warm up good one day you're not going out as good of a day as you did the day you really wanted up we you know little things like that play a big role in the athlete's performance now to kind of switch subjects a little welcome you into track and track coaching i got into a track my freshman year when my mother told me i had to get straight a's or do track and field and i never thought about doing track and i said well i guess i'll do track to clarify the story i don't think i got straight  her i just did track and never got the straight a's after that either but i just went off a track and then i started doing track and then the next year i did cross country and indoor track and outdoor track and then repeated the process through high school so i did track for all four years and i did a cross country an indoor track for three years i really enjoyed it in some ways i think when you're the athlete and you're going to track it is a tough sport i remember not always liking it not always being in the mood to run the races you mentioned i tried a lot of different races i started off in some races a sort of more of the sprinters side and then up more on the distance i have a time i was done running kind of just say well maybe one hundred not for you it was rather four hundred and maybe eight hundred to get pushing back to try to find the race that i would be best that we found the race i was best that i would say i was really good at it but it was where i was the best performance wise  i did the eight hundred a lot and then you asked about coaching when i graduated high school i went off to college i ran into my track zero to one point and he said i want to go back in coach so i came back and started coaching in two thousand and two i started coaching track and then just never left been coaching ever since then in some capacity some way shape or form and do you feel like after sixteen years what keeps you going coaching kids it's not a glorious job it's not that i mean it's it's always fun every years different and it was talked about it's always enjoyable to see the kids the athletes get their best time run the best race i like the sport a lot because if we don't cut if somebody wants to do track and field they can do track and field and like we said it doesn't keeping all those athletes if we keep one hundred ten kids or hundred fifty kids it crazier with a hundred fifty because you got more bodies absolutely there's more people there's more to do there's more to worry about but generally speaking it doesn't affect the teams you've got a couple more sprinters running you've got a couple more throwers throwing but it doesn't impact you know the team's training at all or anything like that but it does allow a student who wants to do a sport to participate in a dual sport  like i said i was never the best at any race when i did high school sports our high school track and field i was never in any danger of making the record board or anything like that but i did enjoy i really enjoyed the time enjoyed thinking about it you know i've said it at the banquet in meetings and stuff before that i still talk to all the guys i did track and field with from high school we still keep in touch so that the friendships that you make we've all gotten faster and we've all gotten better track as we got older we all think we did better than we really did back in two thousand and nine hundred ninety nine and such but but i just had fun and it's just been enjoyable like you said it makes it makes the spring busy makes a lot and makes that it's a lot of a lot of time spent in and a lot of  you know saturdays spent to track meets and some weather here and rain there and snow and stuff but never perfect now there's never going to be perfect weather but it does you know when you see it athlete get their best time get their best jump  goals you know and everyone's goal is different some people want to break fourteen seconds in the hundred so we want to make stakes in their event and when you see an athlete get to their goal whether it's breaking a certain time mark throwing a certain mark or you know making it to states or meddling it w and getting those you know those results it's really it's really great to see that young people get those experiences now you kind of touched on like one hundred kids and between hundred to two hundred kids and students as a coach i mean it gets hectic sometimes how do you control everyone at the same time what we've tried to do if you've got i think the biggest team we've had in the last couple years is about one hundred and settled about  hundred thirty always starts a little bit more but some people come out and they're like this just isn't for me you know so the make a week or two in they're just like wow i don't know you like track i thought i would so we saw about one hundred thirty yeah i mean you're never going to be with one hundred thirty kids all in one spot that's just more for like there's a time the bus leaves tomorrow guys then we break up in your individual events so to speak you know throwers need to go to their area distance need to go with distance jumpers  jumpers pole vaulters we do have a coach for every individual event you know it is track and field so it split the two groups automatically the track kids in the field kids the track kids are usually split into more subgroups sprinters and distance hurdlers they all have their individual coach and so on field a split into high jumpers long jump or triple jumpers in the throwers so you kind of to break it up into smaller groups and smaller subsections and with all the different events not everything is important for everybody i mean you know you running the one hundred of the two hundred before by one are not really concerned even though you've done javelin in the past you're not concerned with the javelin practice of the day so we do have to kind of break it up like i said we do all of the way but what's on the bus leaves for the track me and what days we have certain obligations but outside of those general meetings sometimes i will just go make an appearance at the individuals i will walk over to the throwers and talk to the thrower group individually because it's easier to talk to forty kids that is to talk to a group of one hundred i know in track there's two different types of meets there's a faction meets and then there's the invitationals what's the difference between the two well we were talking earlier about the individual times and how it is a more of an individual sport there is a team score for track and field we take all the events there are eighteen events in a track meet eleven on the track seven in the field there are three relays in eight individual races the relays are a team of a relay team for runners in the same school running together each one runs a leg of the relay to combine to get a time the section meets would be the team score you know those are going to be smaller me to be like peters versus cannon mcmillan peters versus mount lebanon whoever's in our section at the time and then the invitationals are where you invite anywhere between  ten schools to maybe eighty schools when you have eighty schools you don't get to bring all one hundred kids on your track team because of all eighty schools brought fifty sixty seventy eighty  hundred kids we would be there for days running races so there is a limitation on entries in different things like that for invitationals invitationals usually award medals and ribbons and prizes to the top eight runners and so on but you have more people we go a section meet you versus kenneth mellon you i go to third place but you're going to have ten ten fifteen twenty kids in a race you go  an invitation all you might have eighty boys in the hundred meter dash or a hundred boys in the hundred meter dash or sixty five pole vaulters so i go to third place it's a little bit different so they go all the way to eighth place they also do score as a team down to eighth place and so on and take everyone's individual relay performances and you add them all together to see how the points stack up and how the score adds up at the end of the day it is tough compared to like a different game like you go to a basketball game you know what the score is pretty much all times you can easily see it on the scoreboard track and field a little tougher to keep track of the score for the athlete you have to go to a specific area to see the specific score being tallied it's not really projected on the scoreboard or anything like that so it's a little bit different now when you go to these compare our school with the other schools i mean yes and no you know we're going to compare our school and our athletes to other kids because we're going to run we would have the race i mean we're going to see how does peters township one hundred meter dash runners compared to the all those schools because they're going to run the race you know and all the events and then a no i mean i've had the kids ask me before did you see i want you to win the meat and i want you to have your best throw and so on and so forth but if this person is throwing above and beyond everybody else that doesn't really change our attitude towards what you're supposed to do and what you're supposed to accomplish and so on and so forth so i don't get too caught up in comparing our times and our marks to other schools i do get caught up in comparing your times from march to your times in may and what your personal best and things like that more so now we go to baldwin and if you're going to have a chance to win the invitational we want that to happen we want you to stack up as best you can compared to all the other schools but you know sometimes you said that's just not a realistic goal to say i'm going to win the ball when well i mean and like i said i mean it really comes back down to your time in your race you know as i mentioned earlier somebody was in no danger of running the ball imitation himself or winning the way feel or doing anything like that or even really coming in first on my team depending on who was in that race on the given day you know you go out and set a goal of i really would like to run this time today i'd like to improve my time getting ready for may i'd like to go into the  time and have a p r that day running against everybody else and sometimes that's just a more realistic expectation than you know saying you know i'm going to win the olympics you know when you have like a really good athlete now  season well as the season goes on the team does shrink as you mentioned just generally speaking when we have our section meet to work in season as a team we could take the whole team to a door meet in a section me as you go in invitationals and you have to limit the number of entries you can get you could take two kids in the hundred meter dash or two kids in the model you mentioned with us you have to qualify for with us you have to be in the top twenty four of those so you know what i mean is to be in the top twenty four of your event or you not going to whip us in that event it changes in the regards of yes if you have the distance team comprised of forty to fifty kids in march and april may rolls around and you're down to ten kids it is easier to manage just because you have less numbers i would say the coaching changes in terms of what you can what you do or how you can coach that athlete what does changes what the workouts they are doing you run more you run longer in march a lot of times as you go especially for distance you'll taper you'll run less miles you won't run as far you might be running fifty miles a week sixty miles a week once you start to taper you run less less less hopefully due to the goal keep your legs fresh run faster at the end of the year always trying to peak you know if your goal is to go to states of your goals to win states then you want to run your best race absolutely at the state championship so you're trying to set up the training schedule with the training times with the distances run to peak at that meet in may now i know personally track is extremely expensive yesterday unfortunately we had to pull a fundraiser so that's kind of over with but how do you get money for outdoor track and what makes a track so expensive  well track you do have eighteen events running the one hundred meter dash outside of the cost of a track that is pretty much done you just run you have to have shoes and uniforms and you run you get in the field events you have to vault with your ratings on your poles you mentioned you had done it you know if you if you weigh one hundred fifty pounds you need to use a pole rated at one hundred fifty pounds or more you can't jump on just any pole and have varying lengths of your jumping twelve feet your pole be shorter than another jumping fifteen feet different things like that it does get expensive in those field events i mean we have a budget from the school to buy equipment you mention the fundraisers we do as a track team we have a booster group that does fundraisers and organizes it and runs those things to supplement the needs of the team but it comes down to just you know generally speaking raising the funds one thing that we do it peters to kind of help you have one hundred kids on the track team hundred thirty kids that's one hundred thirty uniforms that's a lot of uniforms device and a lot of uniforms to replace we share our uniforms with the cross country team so we have two budgets kind of helping for uniforms and things like that but between those avenues we kind of get what we need in and you can always of i think anybody would say they could have more we could have nicer things and nicer equipment but generally speaking between the budget the school in the booster groups and fundraising we do a pretty pretty good job of equipping the team now last question it comes about lettering because i know section meets we will have a team score out of one hundred fifty points you can earn points you are points throughout your race you come in first you get points come in second you get points come third you get points depending on the number of meets we have scheduled for the with you know divide up the relay point to come to a total typically for outdoor track the total has been you need eleven points come in first you get five come in third to get one on a relay you get one point two five often divide five by four so you accumulate points for the team and you accumulate those points and you are in your varsity letter that way for it well it seems like our time has run out unfortunately i didn't get there all the questions i was hoping and the last i wish you found the show to be abo educational and helpful if you want to join indoor track unfortunately you have to wait until next year join but you want to join outdoor track lessons in the morning announcements to find out key information before we go i like to thank our guest mr pinto the first time and the media department for allowing this all to happen and lastly thank you for watching