Winter Preview: Girls Track

Sprinting, sprinting, sprinting. That's one area that the Patchogue-Medford girls winter track team plans to excel in this upcoming season.

After head coach Craig Collins weeds out the 80-plus girls that have showed up the past few days to practice and finds out whom the true diehards are, he'll be able to evaluate his team better. But, for now, the one definite strength for the Raiders is their sprinting…and walking.

Besides having a solid sprinters crew, the Raiders also feature a top-notch walker in Annie Vincenti.

Vincenti broke the school record for the 1500-meter race walk, posting a 7:48:91 during the Section XI Divisional Championships last year. She's hoping to improve on that mark this upcoming season.

Head Coach: Craig Collins

Venue: Suffolk County Community College West

Key Losses:

• Brittany Jones
• Jessica Josema

Key Athletes:

• Bria Jones (sprinter)
• Annie Vincenti (walker)
• Kathleen Costello (long jump, hurdlers, triple jump)
• Jaclyn Schelling (sprinter)

From the Athletes

Jaclyn Schelling on this winter's season: "We're good with the shorter distances, between Kathleen, Bria and me."

Schelling feels the team's workouts will improve their success rate this season, as they put in extra effort on the field. "I think we have a really good team this year. I'm excited; we have a lot of strong freshman.'

Bria Jones on getting back into action: "I'm looking forward to running again and getting back to where I was." She was still sporting a brace resulting from a torn ACL, which happened last season.

Jones is hoping to help fill her sister Brittany's void once she gets back from injury. "I think we're going to excel in some areas, but it's going to be hard filling in some of the spots from last year."

Key Events:

• Winter Relays: 1/10/11 @ 6:00 p.m.
• League Championships: 1/30/11 @ 7:00 p.m.
• State Qualifiers: 2/12/11 @ 11:00 a.m.