During the summer months there are camps for almost every sport and activity. Parents have many from which to choose, but over the years Lakeland High School track coach Bob Mueller realized there were no camps in this area for track and field. Recognizing a need but not sure what the response would be, he put the wheels in motion and for the week of July 21, over 20 children of various ages turned out for what he hopes will become an annual event.
"We’ve been wanting to try and do this for a lot of years but just never got around to it", says Mueller who has been the track and field coach at the school for 25 years. "A couple of years ago, a former state sectional champ who is now my assistant coach, Heather Morabito, said ‘we should do this’".
Virtually none of the middle schools have a track and field program so Mueller feels that Lakeland is at a disadvantage when the kids get to high school. By the time they get to the school they have already been playing soccer, baseball, softball, and many other sports for years, but not track. Still, despite that, the school has had a successful program, which has produced some great individual athletes.
Mueller is not sure what kind of kid is coming to the camp, if their motivation is to become a track athlete, or is it just something different for them to try.
"The new trend now is speed camps and while we’re doing that too, we’re also going to show them the javelin, the long jump, the triple jump, hurdles, and coming out of the starting blocks with the starter’s gun", says Mueller. "We combine that with speed, agility, and we try to make them faster by learning to run better".
Many of the campers are players on travelling softball and soccer teams but what they will learn in the camp, speed and agility, are things they can use regardless of which sport, if any, they chose to pursue when they get to high school.
"Some of our best track athletes over the years have been the soccer players and it never hurts if you know how to run", says Mueller. "We try to give them every aspect of it. So many kids don’t realize how important it is to stretch after you run and that’s how they wear out and end up getting hurt".
Mueller has two assistants helping him run the camp. One is Morabito who has worked as a physical trainer for a while. After her career at Lakeland she first attended Division II West Chester University but was soon recruited to North Carolina at Chapel Hill, a big time program out of the prestigious Atlantic Coast Conference.
"The kids seem to be enjoying themselves", says Morabito, "they really enjoy running out of the blocks, they keep on asking if we can do that again".
Morabito thinks the most important thing they can learn is proper running form; the correct placement of the arm and the foot can make a difference in how efficiently they can perform.
"That’s what we need to work on, that and their motor skills overall", says Morabito. "Just being able to run in a straight line rather than zigzagging".
Marina Vineis is a recent graduate of Lakeland and will be running at Rutgers this fall. She was a three-season star making the All-County teams in cross-country, track, and winter track.
"I think the idea of a track camp was awesome. As a kid myself I didn’t like all the other sports", says Vineis. "I didn’t begin to run until my freshman year of high school. If it had been offered to me, I would have fallen in love with it sooner and it would have given me an advantage".
By letting the campers see what track and field has to offer, Mueller, Morabito, and Vineis think that children that may not be the greatest athlete may be able to find one aspect of it that suits their strength.
"We want to expose them to all the various events in track, that it’s not just running", says Morabito. "There’s jumping, hurdling, throwing, so many things to track that the kids don’t even realize".
