IHS outdoor track & field poised for strong season

The outdoor track and field season is just getting started, and the biggest team in Tompkins County is off to a promising start.

The Little Red have one meet under their belt (as of April 8), taking part in the Rotary Relays on March 28 at Chenango Forks. The boys and girls teams each finished in sixth place with multiple events won on both teams. First-year head coach Becca Lovenheim was pleased with their performances.

“It was great to see lots of people atop the podium,” Lovenheim said. “It was much colder than we expected, and they had a great time out there. We’re resilient and tough, even though New York spring is hard. It was exciting to see them out there. It was nice to see people coming home with their champion shirts and with some ribbons to start and to get a sense of how some of them are taking on the beginning of their season.”

This season marks Lovenheim’s first leading the Little Red after spending eight years coaching the cross country and outdoor track teams at Lansing. It will be a new challenge for Lovenheim taking over a much larger program, but it’s a challenge that she’s certainly looking forward to tackling.

“I really had loved my time [at Lansing] and continue to enjoy cheering on Lansing, but this was an exciting new chapter for me to go ahead and work with a larger program, work with the STAC, making a shift over from the IAC,” Lovenheim said. “It’s a difference of scale. It’s a fantastic program with a very rich history. My goal coming in is to make sure that we can just continue to see success at all levels, both in terms of kids seeing personal records and continuing to leave marks on our record books and also seeing a lot of personal growth.”

With over 100 student-athletes on the combined boys and girls teams, Lovenheim will have plenty of help along the way from her coaching staff, many of whom return from last season. This includes assistant coaches Cole Clemons, Ian Golden (distance runners), and Khiry Brown (sprints and jumps) and a litany of other support staff.

“We have a variety of volunteer coaches who are coming in to help out,” Lovenheim said. “And then obviously [there’s] the trainers and the strength and conditioning. I would say there are parts that are just so exciting to see in terms of resources and Ithaca’s able to offer to their student athletes: fantastic strength and conditioning options and lots of different spaces at our disposal.”

There are plenty of standout athletes on the boys team, in particular with their distance runners. Riley Hubisz comes into the outdoor season having won state and federation titles in the 3,200-meter run during the indoor season. Noah Hilker was a state qualifier last year in the 3,000-meter steeplechase and won a cross country sectional title in the fall. Crosby Woods also returns having won a sectional title last season in the 3,200-meter run.

“They are very committed to the sport,” Lovenheim said. “They are very supportive of each other and they have had a great attitude in terms of how they approach running as a lifelong sport. [It’s] something that they’re excited about. They understand as much as they put into it is what they’ll take out of it.”

Meanwhile, the girls team has a boatload of young talent who have already found success in the early stages of their high school careers. Tsadia Bercuvitz stole the show last year as only an eighth grader by winning a sectional championship in the 1,500-meter run and qualifying for states in the 3,000-meter run. Sophomore Eliza DeRito also took part in states last spring in the 400-meter hurdles. Along with freshman Maren Golden and eighth grader Avery Whittaker, the quartet started this season on a high note by winning the girls distance medley at the Rotary Relays.

“The nice part I’m seeing is that when you look across their entire cohort, it’s a very supportive group,” Lovenheim said. “It’s always exciting when you see talent coming through, and it’s even more exciting as a coach when you see that there is a great deal of drive, humility, and great sportsmanship from not only those strong runners, but from their entire team.”

By the end of the campaign, Lovenheim hopes to see as many Ithaca jerseys as possible at state qualifiers and build on the proud history that the program has long established.

“Our big goals this season as a coaching staff were to make sure that this team felt really connected to each other and to the Ithaca tradition, and that is one of excellence,” Lovenheim said. “When we go through our history books, it’s pretty amazing [to see] some of the performances that have come out of Ithaca on a continuous basis, and so we’re looking to continue to grow upon that.”