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Photo courtesy of Raul Madera. Pictured are Westwood Track Boys Sprinting Captain Vijay Sherring (left), Head Coach Raul Madera, and Girls Sprinting Captain Rachel Shi at the end of their 2022 spring season..
Tryouts for Westwood High School fall sports are underway, and many teams begin their selection process this Monday, August 22, 2022, with decisions planned to be made this Wednesday. Best of luck to the athletes who will be undergoing a process that can be exciting, stressful, and at the end produce an experience of either disappointment or elation.
This fall, there’s football and cheer, soccer, field hockey, and volleyball. There’s also cross country, the fall sport in which tryouts are not required - similarly to spring's track and field team.
Photo courtesy of Jen Teahan. The Westwood Girls 4 x 100 team were Tri-Valley League champions by placing first in their event this spring. From left to right are Rachel Shi, Victoria McGowan, Harper Morrison, and Tessa O'Reilly, With no disrespect to the process of tryouts which hold a legitimate place in high school sports, the presence of opportunities that welcome all to participate in the sports community seem more valuable than ever. We are in a time when high schoolers today are faced with a slew of additional stressors that their parents never faced in their formative years. While there will always be a place for team tryouts, it seems important to have opportunities like cross country and track and field where joining a sports community can be achieved without the prospect of facing a cut.
“There are no tryouts at any level. So, anyone is allowed on the team,” says Raul Madera, Head Coach of Westwood’s Track and Field team. His most recent team had 70 girls and 50 boys for a total of 120 athletes. While seemingly a large number compared to other high school sports teams, it represents a smaller group compared to pre-COVID-19 times. Still, it is a “solid core,” says Mr. Madera. (Mr. Madera attributes the loss in numbers to potential participants losing interest with the earlier pandemic requirement of wearing masks in training and competition.)
Photo courtesy of Jen Teahan. The Wolveriness pose while on a pit stop during travel to Divisionals.The open team can make for a large cheering section and the opportunity to build a sizeable community of support. While boys may compete against boys, and girls may compete against girls, the overall track team is considered a co-ed unit. Coaching responsibility for the entire group of athletes is shared by adult staff and students as well.
Mr. Madera acknowledges the efforts of many coaches – Ed Lyons for boys’ distance, Jen Teahan for girls distance, Meg Hughes for middle distance, Julia Woodard for hurdles, Tim Chant for jumping and Tom Baird for shot put, discus and javelin. While Mr. Madera has taken on responsibilities for the program as a whole, his coaching focus is sprinting. There are also the student team captains who are also leaders.
“We emphasize building a team. We use captains to build a community where even if you are not the top athlete, you feel you have a role and are working toward something,” says Mr. Madera.
Team building activities go beyond the track and field. In recent years, there has been established the new team tradition of volunteering to plant flags at each grave in Westwood’s cemetery for Memorial Day. On Earth Day, the team cleans up the high school campus by holding a competition to see who can collect the most trash or the most ridiculous trash.
And just because a team has no tryouts and creates a supportive environment, doesn’t make it a less competitive or less desirable sport to participate in. In fact, “Athletes tend to try it [track and field] maybe on a whim, and then they fall in love with how supportive the team is,” says Mr. Madera.
Photo courtesy of Jen Teahan. Members of Westwood Boys Track and Field gathered for a pre-prom celebration.He points to Vijay Sherring, the recently graduated team captain and Tri-Valley League All-Star, as an all-around positive example. “I would be remiss not to mention the senior captain Vijay,” Mr. Madera says. He notes that the graduated senior’s positive energy will still help the team to grow, even after his absence.
“He was a role model. He was special because of his investment to the team. He took losses hard and was the happiest person on the wins. He took the sport seriously, and was the first to arrive and the last to leave. He was such a workhorse, always asking to do one more set, one more lift. Even as a coach, I felt I should be better. He loved the team so much, you wanted to work hard,” says Mr. Madera.
Hopkinton High School's coach specifically cited Mr. Sherring as a reason for casting his vote for Westwood for the Sportsmanship Award for the Tri-Valley League (TVL) last spring, notes Mr. Madera, and Westwood's teams were cited for creating positive energy. That reputation made both Boys and the Girls Track and Field teams the top vote getters and the recipients of last spring's TVL Sportsmanship Awards. The league includes large schools such as Holliston, Hopkinton, Norwood, Ashland and Medfield. The Wolverines were known for cheering on the personal performances of not only of their teammates, but also of their opponents.
"This team was remarkable - talented, kind-hearted, motivated, and friendly! The upperclassmen were great role models of hard work, tenacity and sportsmanship! They created an environment where everyone was included, supported and celebrated for every achievement and we had a ton! Going to miss our senior class and so grateful for the legacy they left us with!" comments Ms. Teahan, the team's distance coach.
Photo courtesy of Raul Madera. Pictured (left to right) are Katie Tran who won the Competitive Spirit Award, Head Coach Raul Madera, Taylor Regan who won the Coaches Award, and Hurdling Coach Julia Woodard. Sportsmanship and a supportive culture feed into performance, Mr. Madera believes. Mr. Madera tracks every single performance of every one of his athletes on a large spreadsheet, and gives recognition to anyone who has scored a personal best, regardless of whether the performance ended up in scoring team points.
“That’s how you build the team. Running is hard and stressful and you get tired. You need team camaraderie to keep people going, or it gets boring pretty fast,” he said.
Mr. Madera should know. He can look to personal experience for the ingredients of success in the sport. His own performances in 2009 and 2011 as a student at Tappan Zee High School in New Jersey have stood the test of time in the school’s record books. Individually, he posted the eighth fastest time in the 400 meter hurdles. The 4 x 400 relay team of which he was a member owns the seventh fastest time, and his distance medley relay team ranks sixth fastest of all time at the school.
Photo courtesy of Jen Teahan. Incoming Westwood High School junior Caroline Kelleher competed in the 400 meter event at the All-State in May.Under the coaching approach of Mr. Madera and his colleagues, the Wolverines have also had some standout performances. Caroline Kelleher recently made it to the state competition in the 400 meters. Now running that distance in about 60 seconds, she will be aiming for the Westwood High School record of 59.3 seconds as a junior in the coming season, said Mr. Madera. The 4 x 100 meter relay team of Rachel Shi, Tessa O’Reilly, Victoria McGowan and anchors Ruby Codrington and Harper Morrison were TVL champions. They placed sixth at Divisionals and were the first Wolverine team in the last five years to post a time under 52 seconds in the event. Joshua Jerskey nabbed second in the TVL Championship, and just missed the qualifying time for the state competition by a fraction of a second.
Photo courtesy of Jen Teahan. The Girls Track Team came together earlier this summer to celebrate the season's successes.Looking ahead, Mr. Madera observes, “For the next season, our goal as a team is to qualify as many athletes as possible for All-State. That is where the toughest competition is, so we want to be right in there, fighting with them.”
“I start the fire, I help line up the goals,” he said. “They [the students] internalize them and fight for them. As coaches, we start the fire, but we can’t do the work. They do the work.." He notes again, the importance of a supportive environment amidst the hard work. "My workouts are not easy. . . . The only way to make them work as hard as I make them [work] is if they are supportive of each other. If I ask for six 200 meter repeats, that’s hard to do without a team supporting you. So, I make that my focus,” says Mr. Madera.
For team sports in any season, that sounds like a winning approach.
Thanks to Raul Madera and Jen Teahan for speaking with Westwood Minute.
