By Matthew DeForest, Feb. 15, 2022
The 2022 track and field season is underway as the women’s team has begun to compete at indoor meets in New Mexico and Michigan.
The women of the Cal Poly Pomona track and field team last competed on March 13, 2020, when COVID-19 shut down the start of the outdoor season and the NCAA Indoor Championships.
This year, the team has been hard at work to prepare for the start of the season. Practice has returned to normal alongside COVID-19 testing precautions and mask mandates.
Being sidelined for nearly two years has been a unique challenge for head coach Chris Bradford and his athletes. However, he has observed a rise in leadership among the team as the indoor season has begun.
“I think with our women’s team finally being together at a competition during these indoor meets, they’re really starting to find their own voices and find out what it is to be a team at a track meet because it has been so long since they’ve done it,” said Bradford.
Bradford has felt in-person interaction this year has been the key to the team’s rapid growth. The women’s team alone consists of 37 athletes and getting a group that large together in one place was often impossible during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic.
After having one season cut short in 2020 and another cancelled altogether in 2021, athletes like Ayana Fields have been excited to start their season and get a chance to finish what they started two years ago.
The indoor season is a favorite of Fields, who set multiple program records in her events in New Mexico. She had previously qualified for the NCAA Indoor Championships during the shortened 2020 season.
“When COVID happened, I was at nationals but then everything took a turn for the worst and I had to come back and quarantine,” said Fields. “So, coming back this year it’s definitely time to go out there and fulfill what I wasn’t able to accomplish back then.”
Fields and her teammates say the start of the outdoor season is special because it gives the whole track program, men and women, the chance to compete alongside one another. Both teams are tight knit groups looking forward to watching each other compete.
The outdoor season also means that the team will have to travel less and will not have to travel as far as they would during the indoor season. There are currently no major indoor meets in the state of California for the Broncos to compete in as a team.
Outdoor meets for both the women’s and men’s teams include the Rossi Relays in Claremont, California to begin the season and the Mt. SAC Relays later in the year.
Unlike most other sports such as soccer and baseball, the track and field team does not compete solely against other Division II schools and athletes. So far, the women’s team has already competed against D1 schools like Arizona State and UCLA.
CPP athletes compete at a high level against these other schools. According to Bradford, Fields is currently third in the nation in the 400-meter sprint race, while Jade De Souza is sixth in the nation in the triple jump event.
Bradford and the other coaches are pushing all their athletes to compete at this level and set high expectations for the team. Bradford says that the goal is to bring as many athletes as possible to nationals and avoid leaving people at home when the time comes.
Men’s hurdler Kaelin Moore shared his coaches’ expectations for both the men’s and women’s teams’ championship prospects.
“I have very high expectations for this team,” said Moore. “Seeing the women compete at the indoor level, there are a lot of people putting up very high scores that would dominate at the outdoor level also.”
Bradford believes that the whole team is filled with talent and hopes that the team will get all the chances they need to showcase that that talent.
“This is going to sound really cliché, but I’m really excited about all of them. We’ve had great success with women’s sprinters, our women’s throwers are a talented group, and we have a really talented group of jumpers,” said Bradford.
The women’s indoor season will conclude on March 11 and March 12 at the NCAA Indoor Championships. The women’s and men’s outdoor seasons will begin on Feb. 26 at the Rossi Relays. For more information, visit CPP Athletics website.
Feature photo courtesy of Brian Boysen.
