MARSHFIELD – When Marshfield High School girls track and field head coach Ali Luedtke says she has a balanced program, she will give several examples.
First and foremost, Luedtke — who has been in the Marshfield track program since 2004 and is in her sixth year as head coach — points to the 81 student-athletes in her program this season, and a fairly-balanced representation from each class.
“What that number definitely gives us is flexibility,” Luedtke recently told Hub City Times. “Kids are busy, so we have a lot of natural conflicts that happen during our season, so having eighty-one on the roster allows those conflicts to take some of our athletes out of those opportunities for meets, but it also gives us as coaches another person to put in that spot. It gives everybody that opportunity to make their mark, show where they are on the depth chart on our team and help us with future lineups.”
This year’s squad features eighteen seniors, eighteen juniors, twenty sophomores and 25 freshmen.
“I’d love to say if I could have a hundred, I’m always reaching for that perfect hundred. Twenty-five from each grade would be amazing,” Coach Luedtke added. “I have twenty-five freshmen who are on our roster, so that’s a great start. It’s not very common that I end with that same twenty-five when they’re seniors, so to start with twenty-five is great, and if I can retain twenty per grade that would be awesome.”
Not only does she have a good number of students, but Luedtke is also pleased with how well-rounded their athletic backgrounds are.
“We love and we preach multi-sport athletes,” she said. “We ask our girls to get involved in other sports during the offseason. We have I believe only twelve athletes who have not participated in a sport prior to track and field this season. We definitely build off the success of other sports. When you have that activity all year long, you can just see the endurance, the stamina, the grit. It all shows up, and being a spring sport we get to see that variety, so we’re very happy to have those multi-sport athletes.”
Gymnastics, volleyball, basketball, tennis, cross country and wrestling are all represented on this spring’s track and field roster.
“The biggest thing that we see from those multi-sport athletes is they come in day one ready to go. If you take advantage of the opportunities that are there for you, whether it’s a sport, offseason training, Polar Bear Run Club, you’re going to see the results you want day one,” said Luedtke.
Another part of Luedtke’s balanced program is assistant coaches who have many years of experience in the sport and the MHS program in particular.
“Dan Akin is my statistician extraordinaire,” she told us. “He also manages boys’ and girls’ distance, so he manages all of our other assistant coaches who help him, which is Scott Saager, Denny Christianson and Kyle Pflug. And then he does help… high jump is his specialty area.
“Coach Kristen Brandt, she coaches our long jump and triple jumpers. She is also a great sprinter,” Luedtke added. “She was a state champion sprinter in high school, ran collegiately for Wisconsin and so we are definitely going to utilize her in our sprints as well.
“Coach Jess Le Moine is our throws coach. Coach Jim Sherburne is our hurdle extraordinaire, relay specialist and sprint coach. And Coach Steve Weiler is our boys’ and girls’ vault coach,” Luedtke also mentioned.
Another aspect of Luedtke’s balanced approach is finding depth in each event.
“I do gather a lot of information from my athletes,” she shared. “My girls sit through a team meeting at least once a week where they listen to me fill out goal sheets, give me some data on what events they like, what they’re looking for, so I gather a lot of that, which then helps me decide where to put girls.
“The No. 1 thing I tell my athletes is, ‘After you take care of family and school, and you’ve chosen to still be on this team, I want you to want to be here. I can’t make you do any event if you’re not comfortable. I don’t want you to compete if you’re not comfortable.’ So, that ‘want to’ is built into my athletes from day one,” Luedtke said. “And I rely heavily on my assistant coaches to tell me how athletes are doing in their specific specialty events. We split a lot of our time in practice between events.”
Some of the balance that Coach Luedtke is seeking showed up in the team’s first meet of the season, when her 3,200-meter relay team — made up of a senior, junior, sophomore and freshman — broke a 20-year-old school record in the event, at the SPASH Indoor Invitational March 20 at UW-Stevens Point.
“Coach Akin did call it,” Luedtke disclosed. “He felt it way before the season started that we could do it.”
The record-breaking team consisted of senior Natalie Scharenbroch, junior Adeline Lonsdale, sophomore Madi Bauer and freshman Leeann Luedtke.
“We have Hailey Klumb coming back,” Coach Luedtke added. “She was part of the record-setting 3,200-meter relay team outdoors last year.
“We have senior Hannah Ridgway,” Luedtke continued. “We also have (junior) Abby Cera coming back in our throws. We have Lilly Adler, who is dynamite on the track and in the field. She started the season off great at the Panther meet with great 400 runs on the track and starting off where she left off last year in the high jump, so very excited about everything that’s going to be coming for her.”
The Tigers have twenty-four returning letter winners from last year’s team.
Comments
No comments on this item Please log in to comment by clicking here