Saturday’s meet marks the start of a season in which the UVM track team will have no home meets all season.

The outdoor season for the UVM track team opened April 3, when the team participated in the American International College meet in Springfield, Massachusetts. “We were supposed to have a regular meet last year that got canceled because of weather, and that caused a ton of problems,” senior Dave Connors said. “So since the meet got canceled last second we had to arrange a new meet which was a pretty big hassle. Our lack of home meets has more to do with the Vermont weather.”

Although the team is somewhat disappointed to not have any home meets this season, they remain focused on competing, not where they will be competing.

Sophomore runner Daniel DeLuna said the absence of home meets has little to do with the overall quality of the UVM track. “We have probably one of the nicer tracks in the conference,” DeLuna said. “We hosted the America East tournament last year and all the teams last year said they loved it.”

Connors echoed DeLuna’s praise of the UVM track. “We have one of the best tracks I’ve ever run on,” Connors said. “It was brand new my freshman year. It’s a great track.”

This year, the University of Albany, who recently built a new track, will host the America East Conference tournament.

“A lot of people like the home meets, it’s nice to race at our track and in front of our fans,” DeLuna said. “It doesn’t really matter where we race. We’re going to race hard.”

 

The team has high expectations for the upcoming season, he said.  Much of this optimism comes from  both the success of the indoor track team this past winter, as well as the number of team members who are able to compete for the upcoming spring season.

“We have pretty high expectations, our indoor team did pretty well,” DeLuna said. “Everyone is pretty healthy and we are looking forward to the season, everyone is pretty pumped up.”

Connors said he is not worried about the increased travel time that comes with not having any home meets all season long. The team has five meets for the outdoor season before the America East Championships at Albany May 2-3.  “I don’t really think it’s going to be an issue. For indoor we do a lot of traveling so at this point we are pretty used to it,” Connors said.