Returning Revere Women’s Track athletes seek to build on last season’s successes with hardwork and leadership.
The accomplished runners, Kiera Lang, Caroline Wilson, Leah Valentine and Aleni Bender were all Regional qualifiers and league champions last season. All of them are returning this year to improve in their events and rally the team to further success.
Kevin Sommerville, the head coach of the women’s track team, said the 2023 season was an excellent season for the team. Sommerville took pride in last year’s group of dominant runners, as many competed in the District and Regional tournaments.
”Last year we had an awesome Varsity representation at Districts where we saw our best results that we’ve had since I’ve been coaching the program,” Sommerville said.
Lang, a sophomore and key returner who qualified for Districts in the 1600 meter race, learned important lessons from her experience.
“I definitely gained how to be dedicated, because it takes a lot of dedication to get better at a sport, especially running and how to be a leader and lead team members and encourage them,” Lang said.
Wilson, another sophomore, competed at the District tournament in the 4×8 relay team. She noticed that she grew as an athlete and student through track.
“I got a lot of confidence and I understood how hard work actually worked. That kind of affected me in school, I didn’t have amazing grades until I found out that you can actually work hard at something and then become good at it,” Wilson said.
Sommerville hopes that Lang, Wilson, Valentine and Bender will lead their peers to another successful season.
“I think they bring leadership by example right away where they are all going to show up and do the work it takes to have a high level of success. They are really good at making it a positive atmosphere at practice,” Sommerville said.
The strong sense of leadership comes from the relationships built with the team during their time preparing for their seasons during practice. Valentine, a senior and a sprint runner at the District and Regional meets, said that she felt closer with her team through the process of working hard and training to prepare for the upcoming season.
”I think last season was a really good season for both me and the team. It was definitely like a breakout season for me because between my freshman and sophomore year, I didn’t really improve that much. But then after that, I really decided to train hard in the offseason and had huge improvements from sophomore to junior year and I think our team also had a lot of success. I think a part of that was we all started meeting and doing like our own practices, and just getting a team culture really wanting to do well,” Valentine said.
For this season, the team intends to improve and grow to work towards their individual and team goals. The goals for the runners are to qualify for District and Regional tournaments and to get personal records in their events.
“I’m hoping to just get another PR and keep improving,” Valentine said.
Bender, a senior 4×800 runner at Regional meets, said that for her last year, she wants to focus on the time she spends with her teammates, and making the most of it.
“I just want to just have a good senior season because I’ve been with the same girls for three, four years. And the friendships that we’ve made inside the team are just really cool. So I think that just being able to spend this last year with them is just something that I’m going to cherish,” Bender said.
