On your mark, get set, RUN! Battle track team is ready to kickoff the season with a bang and it’s almost that time to put on your running shoes, shorts and tights, so you can look, act and be a track stud.

Last year, Battle’s track team accomplished spectacular things. People made it through districts and onto state, every athlete competed at their highest level and they don’t give up. Coach Travis Daller, who is Battle’s new distance running coach has high expectations on working your tail off and be a better runner than they were before. “I expect all my runners to do their best and I want to see improvement and compare their old time to their new time,” Daller says.

Daller believes that his distance team, is going to face challenges during the season, especially at Liberty, because Kansas City schools has one of the best track program and they are tough, well experienced runners. That doesn’t seem to affect Daller’s team, because no matter how tough things get, all the runners are going to learn something out of it. Aidan Scheffel and Ethan Line are the most watched runners who tend to have successful seasons since their Freshman year. Although the distance team as a whole is ready to run and run, till everyone says I’m tired.

Coach Brian Hancock is stepping up this year as head coach, having coached the three previous years of Battle track. Hancock is an accomplished track and field athlete himself. He owns Mizzou’s indoor pole vault record and a four time state champion under pole vault in high school. He’ll be coaching Battle’s jump team, and he’s ready for the real deal when the season starts. He has one expectation for his jumpers, “Get more and more kids onto the podium than last year,” Hancock says. Some additional things to know about his jump squad is that they are ready to improve their personal records and be more aggressive than they were before. His goals include “Making sure I’m planning my workouts and I start my workouts at the end of the season to the beginning where I can see major work ethic that all my athletes can show.”

Last year, the sprint team was phenomenal. Especially the boys team. Former Spartans, Roger White, DJ Overall, Chyrome Thorpe, and Omar Hayes had all unique abilities on running the track. The guys had great chemistry which allowed them to compete with other great teams. This year Coach Cedric Alvis is working on gathering a relay team with former runner Brevinin Tyler, sophomore Larue Martin and Joe Magee. This relay group isn’t official yet, but Alvis has great coaching authority that can create such a team. On the girls side, hard work was just as crucial. Jerrica Key, Alexis Spikes, Serena Williams, and Taylor Hamilton each had personal records, they made it to state and Coach Alvis was proud of them and their hard work.

For this year Coach Alvis has the same expectations he had last year. He has multiple breakout sprinters he trains such as Serena Williams, and she owns Battle’s 100M record. Serena is planning on continuing her success with seniors Jerrica Key and Alexis Spikes as Coach Alvis has the secret recipe on making the fastest sprint team. “My goal for them is to meet their own personal goals and be a better sprinter the day before the meet,” Alvis says.

Battle has a good schedule lined up, it’s going to be fun and exciting to watch. If you’ve never been to a track meet, there’s no better time. If you want to see a great team perform at their highest peak, Battle will certainly strive to meet expectations.