BY ISABELLA SULLIVAN

Katie Burgess is a sprinter on the track team here at Beverly High School. She is a senior and is upcoming her final years for highschool track and field. She is currently a captain this year, hoping to lead the track team to a successful season. She takes part in indoor and outdoor track for winter and spring, she has been on varsity ever since her sophomore year. Her improvement from the last couple of years has grown tremendously and continues to grow better and better each year. 

Panther News: What first got you interested in track and field? 

I needed something to do in my free time, as I had so much free time after school and the weekends during my first years of high school. So I thought to try it out for it my freshmen year, and a lot of my friends were doing it too.

Panther News: Did you start your track career before high school?

Not really, I was playing soccer more before high school. I wasn’t too interested in running because I thought it would be a lot of work and it seemed like an intimidating and almost impossible sport for me to play in. But I only began my official track career in my freshmen year. 

Panther News: How much do you think you have improved from when you first started track and field?

I think I personally have improved a lot since my freshman year. I didn’t really know what I was doing and was just doing mostly to stay in shape. Once I got more experience of what track and field was like I got more comfortable with it, and was able to improve my mentality and I then began to PR a lot of my events.

Panther News: How is track and field different from other sports?

A lot of it has to do with the mentality of the sport. It’s an individual sport in the end and you have to do the best for yourself. It puts a lot of pressure on you to be good for yourself as the scoring relies on the time you got. It’s not a team sport where you work together to try to win in a game, besides the ending score of the match. I always get nervous before any meet because I feel like there’s so much pressure on me to do better than my last meet.

Panther News: Do you want to continue your track career in college?

I would like to, since now it’s my main sport that I compete in. I have gotten more confident in myself and I put in a lot more effort than I used to. I think if I had the opportunity to play in college I definitely would consider it, but I’m okay with not playing in college either way. 

Panther News: Which events do you compete in?

I have competed in the 300m, long jump, and the 4×4. My coach usually changes my events based on what he thinks I would do best at. But most times I am doing a 300m run or the 4×4 which is run by four different people and we all run a 400 m.

Panther News: Is track and field your favorite sport you have played?

It’s one of my favorite sports I have gotten introduced to, definitely. At first I wasn’t even that intrigued by it and didn’t even know if I was gonna like it or even continue doing it my first years. When I started practicing more and improved my running it was way more fun to play in since there was more competition in my meets.

Panther News: Did you ever see yourself running track for Beverly before you tried out for it? 

Definitely not, it might be a shock to people but for me it wasn’t at the top of my interests to run track. I needed a way to stay in shape somehow and this was a way I could in the winter, since I started my very first year of track during my freshmen winter year.