Indoor track practice began Dec. 6, and most of the team is already conditioned and ready to go. A good amount of the athletes are veterans of the cross country team, so their running shape is intact. For the most part, all of the season is about practice, practice and more practice. The athletes practice after school until meets begin. Meets for indoor track are plenty different from outdoor track. While outdoor meets occur approximately once a week, maybe even twice, indoor has meets once or twice a month beginning in January. Indoor meets differ because they take place at colleges. Many schools attend, bringing thousands of people to watch. “It functions pretty much the same way as invitationals do,” Junior Wes Roberts said. The farthest meet Freedom travels to is Edinboro, which Junior Noah Marks thinks is cool because “it’s like a huge bubble with a track inside.” Although the meets function similarly to invitationals, they are two different events. With indoor track, you don’t have to be invited to compete. The whole team goes as if it were a regular meet, which it is. Some kids enjoy competing indoor because they have such great passion for running. “I like going away to the meets because they’re longer, farther away. I like all the people that do it. All the people there are serious about it,” Sophomore Gigi DeWeese said. She likes running indoor track because it is more relaxed than outdoor. She feels more relaxed because the team isn’t expected to do quite as well as they would in an outdoor meet. She also feels that the air is much drier than outside, so that factor comes into play while running. When it comes to how many people there are at indoor meets compared to outdoor, there really is no comparison. With all of the competitors at indoor meets, it seems as though it would be harder to place than it would regularly be. “At outdoor meets you win, but when it comes to indoor, you almost win,” DeWeese said. Practice doesn’t always pay off, though, because with a thousand competitors, it’s even harder to place first. Since outdoor track happens right after indoor ends, it does have its advantage with already being conditioned and so on. DeWeese says it is important to keep running year-round. First, there is cross country. After that, there is indoor, which is followed by outdoor to keep the athletes in shape. Finally, after outdoor ends, the cycle begins all over again. Not only do the runners get a workout from indoor track; the throwers and pole vaulters do too. All of the extra practice before outdoor begins gives the athletes an advantage. When March rolls around, the indoor track team will have lead a healthy season that will keep them in spirit for outdoor.