Every year, eighth grade graduates filter into high school, many of them athletes looking for a sport to pursue in high school.

The new and improved Irving Track Club is getting more students interested in running Cross Country or Track and Field in high school.  Veteran Cross Country runners, sophomore Kate Donovan and juniors Momo Sullivan and Sara Lepley will be leading the weekly practices on the Irving track every Thursday. The Track Club is being headed by Irving teacher Leslie Bumgarner, whose daughter ran Cross Country and Track and Field at Lake Braddock Secondary School for four years. Under new leadership, the club met for the first time on October 8. Nearly 30 students attended the first practice, greatly outnumbering the attendance of prior years.

“I did track club in seventh grade and only around seven people were in it,” said Lepley. “Now, 20 to 30 students showed up, and a lot of them showed promise.”

Besides getting middle school students involved in running, Track club also presents the high school coaches with a great opportunity to scop out prospective athletes for WS’s Cross Country and Track and Field teams. Northern Virginia has one of the most competitive track programs in the US, and many other schools in the area have a helping hand in finding prospective athletes at young ages. Secondary schools, such as Lake Braddock and South County, have the advantage of having prospective middle school athletes in the same building as the high school student athletes and coaches. Giving middle schoolers the incentive to be looked at by the high school coaches makes them more willing to join the club.

“It encourages kids to get out and run,” said Donovan. “It gets students interested in the sport, and now they know what to expect if they join in high school.”

Other middle schools in the area, including those that feed to West Potomac High School and Chantilly High School, have track programs which attract future athletes from a younger age. A more serious and competitive Irving track club could follow the lead of these high schools and keep an eye on promising athletes. They could begin training for a more serious stage of competition sooner.

“It’s a good segue into Track and Cross Country in high school,” said Lepley.

A competitive track club also assists in getting students active and involved in extracurricular activities. There aren’t any programs in our local youth clubs, such as SYC or BRYC, to get younger students involved in running. For this reason, there are limited chances to get kids hooked on the sport the way they get hooked on others, like soccer and lacrosse. Up until now, their main influences have been the incentive of conditioning for their other sports, and family members and friends who run or have run in the past.  A track club at Irving offers the interested students a jump start in pursuing running.

“It’s very important to try to work with Irving students to help them develop a love for track, and running in general,” said Cross Country and Track and Field head coach Chris Pellegrini.