EHS taking break after victory
Most coaches wouldn’t want to take a break immediately after posting one of the biggest victories in the program’s history. But El Dorado girls’ track coach John Koonce welcomed Spring Break, coming off the Lady Wildcats’ victory at the Oil Belt Relays last week.
“We’ve trained very hard since January. We’ve kind of circled that. It was kind of planned that by our meet, the way we train, it makes sense that the kids are hurting the way they’re hurting,” Koonce said. “We put their bodies through just enough to be at peak. But it’s a fine line between being at peak and over-use. Now’s the perfect time to take a week off.”
After falling short against Texarkana in two previous meets, the Lady Wildcats won going away at Oil Belt, scoring 226.5 to the Lady Razorbacks’ 155.5 with Magnolia third at 139.
“We had been telling the girls all preseason that we were figuring out who we were for the first two meets and we’d put our best foot forward for our home meet. Me and the rest of the coaching staff already had a pretty good idea that we were going to be capable of taking down the teams that came to our meet. I’m not sure the girls believed it until the meet,” said Koonce.
“This meet was very instrumental in letting the girls see exactly what we’re capable of as a team. After the meet, I also told them it was only one meet. While that was our best foot forward, we still need to improve as a team if we want to reach our bigger goals. There’s still plenty of things we can work on to get just a little bit better.”
El Dorado’s Breyonna Steward was the high point winner after taking first place in the long jump and triple jump and finishing fourth in the 400.
“Breyonna Steward is a perfect example of the culture that we preach in the El Dorado track program,” said Koonce. “She is the type of kid, that if you tell her before the meet, we had to add you to some events because that’s what the team needs, she’s not going to do anything but look you in the eye and say, ‘awesome.’ She is a hard worker. She is a team leader. I was very happy at the end of the meet when I heard I heard her name for high point.”
The Lady Wildcats’ win at Oil Belt was the first for the girls in recent memory. It created even
more excitement for what might be in the future for the team.
“It makes me more focused. And I hope it also makes the girls more focused,” said Koonce. “We're good right now, but I think we can be a little better. I think there's things we can improve upon. That's what I preach to the girls. I told them, I said, hey, right now, we're a good team. There's lot of good teams in our state. Texarkana won't back down.
“There are other teams we haven't seen, yet that are very good teams. There are things we need to work on if we want to get to that next level. I think we have the kids in place to do it. We have to make sure they're focused on understanding that while Thursday was very good, it might not be good enough to reach the major goals at the end of the year.”
Then again, who knows? The Lady Wildcats showed at Oil Belt they can run with the big dogs.
“When I looked at that team score, every girl on the team contributed to the team score. It was a total team effort,” Koonce said.
“That's what we've been trying to tell the kids. For us to be as good as we can, we have to celebrate those first places and we have to celebrate those eighth places. And we have to celebrate them equally. You need both to be a team that can take down the big dogs.”