With Spring rolling around, student athletes get closer to the track season where Anderson High School is looking to show that they can compete with some of the best programs in the state of Indiana. The team is led by Coach Laitham Louthen in his second year as head coach.
Coach Louthen is looking forward to building a foundation this track season. “Being year two as the head coach of the program, the biggest thing I’m looking forward to is our growth as a program from the kids’ commitment to off season workouts and work ethic that we’ve showed so far the first two weeks of official practice this year,” Louthen said. It is important in the first couple seasons as head coach to get a group that is going to buy in and find a way to keep growing as a group until the time is right.
One of the returning runners, Trenton Coles, was not able to finish the season last year due to injury. This year, he is coming back stronger and looking to have a lot of team success. “I’m looking forward to recruiting more people scoring, at least scoring more points in the county or conference and really competing with, you know, the bigger teams,” Coles says. Anderson track and field is on the come up with being able to compete against better programs.
The track team is growing more and more day by day with everyone becoming more competitive and experienced, even the coaches. “The biggest difference this year has been the time that we could get started, ’cause last year, we weren’t able to get started until late January, by the time I got approved as the coach,” Louthen said. It’s a difference between year one and two year one is usually to build a foundation for a program to keep building. “This year, coming in as, already knowing I was the coach, and being in the building, we were able to start off-season conditioning, and in mid-November, and we were able to consistently have almost 20 athletes a day that wasn’t involved in a winter sport, showing up to lift and run to get ready for this season,” Louthen said.
With track season around the corner there is a lot of hard work behind the scenes before they face some of the best competition in the state. “ Every year we look at our strengths and weaknesses from the year before, and figure out where our weak points are, and where our strong points are,” Louthen said. Just like players, coaches have to work in the off-season, too. “I go to coaching clinics throughout the off season. and do some other things to pick up new strategies for training, new strategies for, you know, how to keep acting healthy. And then trying to come up with new ways to structure practice, to get the most benefit out of our time with the athletes each day,” Louthen said.
