After practicing throughout the week with her track team, Amber Ward doesn’t rest on the weekends. On Saturday and Sunday mornings, she begins her workout with a two-mile run followed by 20 to 40 sit-ups and pushups. She’s 11.
Ward, who began competing in track this year, will be competing in the 1500-meter run in her first visit to the Junior Olympics.
In only it’s first year, the Fort Benning Amateur Athletic Union track program had 15 out of 24 kids qualify for the 2011 Junior Olympics, to be held in New Orleans July 29-Aug. 5.
“That’s way more than I expected,” head coach Howard Galloway said. “I think we accomplished something no one thought we could have done, getting this far in our first year.”
The track program, which began in April, competed in a district Junior Olympic qualifier June 25-26 in Augusta, Ga., against what Galloway called some of the toughest competition in the Southeast.
Athletes were required to place fourth or better in an event in order to qualify for the Junior Olympic Games.
Deja Delaine qualified for the 1500-meter walk and won gold in the shot put. Al Britton, Julian Fowler, Rosalynn Walton, Payton Huss, Saache Ensley and Lauren Scott also qualified for two events.
C.J. Tanksley, 18, one of the oldest members of the team, will return to the Junior Olympics for the second time, after competing in the 4x100 meter relay last year. This year, Tanksley said he will compete in the shot put, which he said is not usually his best event. Tanksley finished fourth in the shot put at Augusta.
Tanskley, who will try to earn a spot on the Columbus State University track team in the fall, said the AAU program has elevated his training efforts compared to what he was used to in high school.
“It’s intense, crazy,” he said about the team’s practices. “It makes you want to die. It taught me not to quit.”
A typical practice, which the team does three days a week, consists of aerobics, pushups, sit-ups, running stadium steps at Doughboy Stadium or running up Cardiac Hill on Main Post.
Galloway said the training of the AAU program has introduced them to a new philosophy of developing a winning mentality, something they struggled with early on. Now, the results have shown they have bought into that philosophy.
“It picked up tremendously,” Galloway said. “At first they didn’t want to practice because they thought practice was too hard. Now, they like to practice. Some of them want to quit, but we push them and push them. We have to work a little harder to win at the Junior Olympics.”
The competition at the Junior Olympics, Galloway said, will be even stiffer than Augusta, but it also shows how far each runner has come in a short period of time.
“Some teams practice every day, some of the teams practice year-round,” Galloway said. “We only started in April.”
Galloway said enrollment for the track program is currently closed and will reopen in January.
