Greenfield-Central girls to have youthful track and field team

GREENFIELD — Second-year Greenfield-Central girls track and field head coach Mike Foster has a nice sizable roster heading into the 2023 season.

He expects to have most of them around for a while.

The Cougars roster includes 37 team members, only five are seniors.

“We have a pretty young team and that’s not a bad problem to have,” Foster said.

A state qualifier and school-record holder, as well as two other regional qualifiers, are among Foster’s 2023 group.

Junior Savannah Lake is coming off an 11th-place finish in the 60-meter dash at the Hoosier State Relays held in Bloomington last weekend. The HSR is the state indoor championships. Lake ran an indoor school-record time of 7.86 seconds.

As a sophomore, she competed in the outdoor state finals in the 100-meter dash. She has a personal best time of 12.62 seconds, which ranks second on the school’s all-time list. The record, 12.51 seconds, was set by Samantha McCoy in 2013.

“She’s looking tough for this coming season,” Foster said of Lake.

Lake is expected to run the short sprints (100, 200) and will be a part of the team’s 4×100 relay.

Reagan Crouch, a senior, and Maddie Mies, a junior, are the other two regional qualifiers.

Crouch qualified in the 300 hurdles and high jump. Mies advanced in the pole vault.

A versatile athlete, who also competed in cross country and swimming, Crouch is expected to run both the 100 and 300 hurdles along with participating the high jump.

Crouch cleared 5-feet, 1-inch in the high jump as a sophomore. She’s ran personal bests of 16.81 seconds in the 100 hurdles and 47.74 seconds in the 300.

Mies will primarily focus on pole vault. She has cleared 8-feet, 6-inches.

“We do have a young team and we’ve got a lot of potential,” Foster said.

Crouch, Megan Scott (sprints, hurdles), Madison Stevens (sprints, high jump), Lauren Uptegrove (hurdles) and Abigail Zorne (sprints) are the lone seniors.

“We’ve got some new faces to the team this year, not all freshmen,” Foster added. “We’ve got some sophomores and some juniors that have decided mid-high school career they’re going to give track a shot and we’re excited to have them. We’ve got about 40 girls on the team right now. That’s a pretty solid number.”

The Cougars will miss one of its all-time bests in graduated Kayana Maroska. A two-time Hancock County girls track and field athlete of the year, Maroska was a state medalist in each of the last two seasons, specializing in the 200 and 400 dashes. She was also a top hurdler for the team and a key member of relays.

“We’ve got some holes to fill, but I think we’ve got those juniors stepping up and we have some of these younger kids that will eventually be able step up into their shoes when they leave next year,” Foster said. “That’s the goal. I can’t remember what famous coach that said it, but we don’t want to be in a position where we’re rebuilding, we want to reload. I like that way of thinking. We have the next person ready to step up into position when the seniors graduate.”

The Cougars open the outdoor season Tuesday with a home meet against Beech Grove and Southport.