Allegheny Men’s and Women’s Track and Field spring season has officially begun.

Taylor Throckmorton, assistant coach, along with multiple members of the team believe this season will prove to be one of their best.

Throckmorton is an Allegheny graduate who competed while he attended the college and has been coaching for two years.

“We’re kind of where we want the team to be,” Throckmorton said. “Two years ago our women’s team finished last at the conference championship and last year we finished fourth, so significant improvement on that side but we’re still improving further.”

Throckmorton said that last year getting second place was plausible but a big stretch so their goal this year is to attain that second place finish.

“This year we have a really strong class of freshman so I think our team is really hungry for that second place. This year we’re really going for that second place finish,” Throckmorton said.

Alex Simon, ’15, a men’s distance runner, said the team is looking very strong and there is a lot of potential.

“We definitely have a lot of talented runners and throwers and sprinters… the conference is getting better every year though so it will definitely be a challenge no matter how good we are,” Simon said. “We still have to do our best to go out there and compete well.”

Nathan Taggart, ’15, runs the heptathlon, the decathlon, hurdles and jumps for the men’s team. He wants to push his team to reach their full potential. He said they have consistently placed third at meets in the past year and that it is time to move up in the ranks this year.

“Our main goal is to try and get over 100 points at the conference meet,” Taggart said.

Taggart said the team needs to maintain the attitude of “we’re all in this together” and to stay focused in order to reach their goals.

“When you’re on the track as an individual, just like a team sport, everyone else has your back and is standing behind you cheering for each other,” Taggart said. “I never really hear them because I’m so focused on the race but we always try to have some people out there cheering for every event.”

Throckmorton said based on a meet they attended in December he expects the season to go significantly well.

“We had some really good marks, a lot of PRs, which are personal records, and even a school record got broken by a freshman so that was a really great preview of how the season will go but now this is the point where we hit the period where we’re competing every weekend from here on out so we really get to see where people are at and how we’ll show up for competition,” Throckmorton said.

Throckmorton said based on the results of the cross-country season, they have qualified to the national championship nine years in a row, they know that they have a strong distance program as well as a strong throwing program.

“In those two event groups we are looking to score a lot of points, we are kind of hoping they will put us in a good spot,” Throckmorton said. “In the last few years our weakest point has been sprinting and jumping so thankfully we now have some great key recruits in those event groups. That will shoulder up some of those issues but those are some events we need to improve on.”

Sara Von Dolln, ’17, a thrower for the women’s team, said the team needs to continue to push one another, which they seem to be doing very well at this season already.

“We need to encourage each other to work harder and set PRs and hopefully win the conference,” Von Dolln said. “We need to continue pushing not just for throws but overall.”

According to Throckmorton and track athletes the teams main goal to get back on top and to continue improving in all event areas.