Champion Chasers: SAISA Track & Field 2024

SAISA Track and Field 2024 was such an amazing experience, and to top it off, OSC won the whole competition!!!

This championship didn’t just come to our hand so easily though, it came with lots and lots of hard training. We started season 3 of sports back in November, and four months of training prepared us for this competition in February, which was hosted at The American International School Chennai.

These months of training were really difficult but made the whole experience worth it in the end, which was the motivation I gave myself to keep going. In these training sessions, we started with more endurance-focused workouts, such as through interval training. We also had a session of strength training. After around 2 months into training, after the December holidays, we properly started focusing on speed. These speed workouts are always my favorites in comparison to the endurance ones, as they are so much shorter where you run at a faster speed. Though by the end of the session, you feel just as exhausted and sore, the experience itself for me is a lot more enjoyable being a speed workout. We would have training sessions every Monday and Wednesday after school, where we would focus on these workouts or relays. Then on Saturdays, was just for field events, which were also really fun days as it was a lot more relaxed and self-paced in terms of what you do. There were also morning training sessions on Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Fridays, which I attended now and then for extra time trials or practice.

During these training sessions, not only was I focusing on the component of my fitness in activity, but also had a role of leadership. Being a part of the senior team of the 15 to 19-year-olds, meant I had lots of the kids looking up to me as a role model too. Thus, I took this as a chance to help them out and give them small coaching tips as well in some events such as during the long jump, when the coaches were not available, I would help the younger kids out with some drills and technique points. Furthermore, at the end of every session, I along side one of the senior captains took the role of leadership in initiating and leading the cool-down. This aspect of being responsible and seen as a role model was a trait I feel I took with me to the SAISA completion. Such being during traveling and being a group leader, as well as at the school making sure the younger kids behave, helping them out with marshaling, giving pep talks before events, and many more things.

When it came to the actual competition, I came into this year thinking we would not place so well, as this year we had a very limited amount of seniors, with a lot more younger kids, which resulted in my 15 – 19 girls age group to consist of just 3 people. This being my third year of a SAISA Track and Field competition, I did not have very high hopes for our results, however, I was definitely wrong with what I predicted!

The events that I had this year were the 100m, 200m, 400m, long jump, discuss, 4x100m and 4x400m relay. From these events, I placed 5th in the long jump with a new personal best, third place in the 4 x 400m relay, and fourth in the 4x100m. From these events, I feel that comparing my performance at the end of the season to the beginning was a big improvement, and I felt good about myself.

After all three days of competing, came the final award ceremony, where at this point we were not very certain if we would come in first place or not, but hearing the announcer say OSC as champions, I was filled with so much excitement and joy! I felt so proud of our team as a whole because everyone had contributed points to this win, which made us feel like we deserved this win so much because of our hard work too!