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For a while, it seemed as if football coaches and track and field coaches were locked in a perpetual battle against one another. Football coaches didn’t want their players to hurt themselves running. Track coaches wanted their athletes to focus on only their sport.
But that view has changed, it’s very evident at Desert Edge High School in Goodyear.
Mark and Marcus Carter, the co-head coaches of the football team, also serve as the track and field coaches at the school. The brothers emphasize a crossover between the two sports. It’s not required for each football player to also compete on the track team, but it’s highly encouraged. About 90 percent of the football team does.
The results have paid off. Desert Edge has 10 athletes who have run faster than 11.50 seconds in the 100 meters, representing depth that nearly every school in the state would love to have. Each one of those athletes also plays on the football team.
“Track translates to every sport,” Mark Carter said. “For us, there’s got to be a direct correlation between us playing in the state championship (for football) last year and then us having the opportunity to win the D-II state championship in track. Plus, you get conditioning. You don’t have to set out a chunk of the day just for conditioning. I think that our guys, working on different muscles, there’s also a preventive measure for injuries. We’re not overusing certain muscles.”
Alongside the Carter brothers, Sharod Selph, Henri MacArthur and Toni Kee have played key roles in the development of the program. Selph, who ran collegiately at Oklahoma State and was part of the 2014 Big 12 Indoor Track and Field championship team, is in charge of the sprinters.
As Marcus Carter said, “If you don’t know everything, then you find someone who does. We lean on these people a lot.”
Junior…
Source link : https://sports.yahoo.com/desert-edge-goodyear-building-deep-131503758.html
Author : AZCentral | The Arizona Republic
Publish date : 2024-04-02 13:15:03
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