The Loyola track team has opened their season with a bang: eight broken records.
The team set their new records at the Southern Mississippi Invitational in Hattiesburg, Miss. Under the training of head coach Andy Canegitta, international business sophomore Daniel Afanador was one of the three male record breakers and Sarah Tortorich, visual arts freshman, helped the women break five more, breaking two individual records and one team record.
According to Canegitta, Loyola’s previous running records were about 11 years old. “They put in hard work so they earned it,” Canegitta said.
Afanador said he felt happy and proud of what he’d accomplished and believes that his practice hours are paying off.
While the track team’s achievements have affected the prestige of the program, Kenny Tsao, music education freshman, thinks that setting those records was also a way to show people that the track team really does exist.
“When people in Louisiana talk about sports, they don’t even think of Loyola,” said Tsao. “When people at Loyola talk about sports, they don’t even think of the track program. I feel as though this was our way of saying, ‘Hi, we do exist.'”
However, Tsao and Afanador point out the importance of consistency with practice, running and being healthy.
“There are many aspects to that, including getting enough rest, eating well and having good habits,” said Tsao.
Tsao and Afanador spoke for the team, noting how consistent practice and Canegitta’s guidance helped them to complete their workouts as efficiently as possible. According to the team members, Canegitta is always available to provide the team with advice and motivating them to improve their running abilities.
Canegitta’s practices consist of different workouts including speed and strength endurance.
“On Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays we are on the track doing repeats, intervals and race-pace runs with distances ranging from 200 – 1600 meters. The total miles on track days is close to three to four miles,” he said.
The track team is approaching the last phase of their season, which they consider to be the “peaking phase.”
As the team enters their last phase of the season, their practices increase in the level of intensity. Team members said that setting the records helped them have a better understanding of what they have to do mentally to improve from their training and seasons in the future.
Canegitta is focusing more on strategy and learning how the team will run their race during these last weeks of the season.
“We will back off from the workouts a little, doing less long sprints, (and more) short sprints, block starts and working on technique,” he said.
Afanador hopes that with the new records set, the team can gain recognition. “I expect to work as hard, if not harder, in order to get better and make the Loyola track team recognized around the New Orleans area,” he said.
Tsao expects the last stretch of training to catch up to them by increasing the intensity of what they do with their legs and to keep running fast.
“We pick the meets in which we feel is the most important, and we center our training around those meets so that when we run them, our legs will be fresh, and we’ll be ready mentally and physically to run really well,” Tsao said.
Tsao and Afanador’s season records were just a warm up and are ready to break more records this season and in the future.
“What I’m looking to build on in this experience are improvement in our times, technique and some more track athletes in the next recruiting class,” Canegitta said. “Hopefully, we can get a few of our athletes to qualify for NAIA Track & Field Championship.”
Yvette Naniuzeyi can be reached at
