The Shaler Area Varsity Indoor Track team has officially wrapped up another season and has just started their second week of the spring outdoor track season. There were many achievements and events in this 2021-2022 indoor season.

The team competed in regular meets as well as events like States, TSTCA Championships, and the Spire Institute.

“I feel that this season was a great success coming off no indoor season last year,” head coach Shawn Ryan said. “Our overall participant level was great, and we had right around 25 athletes training during the winter season. We had several school records broken and SA Indoor Top-10 best either improved or set.”

A lot of the athletes not only broke school records this season, but almost all athletes marked a new personal record in their given events.

The girl’s 4×200 meter relay team was able to achieve a new best time of 1:52.70, beating their previous time by about 2 seconds.

The 4×200 meter girl’s relay team also was able to place 5th overall at the TSTSA Championship meet at Edinboro University. At the end of this event, senior Samantha Hennen and junior Ellie Facher even both qualified for the Indoor State Championships.

“My favorite memory this year was definitely states,” Facher said. “I was able to go up with Sam Hennen. It was at Penn State which has a great facility. I really enjoyed the high-level competition and atmosphere there.”

Facher also set a new personal record of 7.89 seconds in the 60m, which is also a new school record.

Senior Josh Maida, who had just recovered from an injury, also had a great performance and broke his personal record in the 200m relay.
“I was really excited,” Maida said. “We broke the record for DMR and I got my best PR in the 200-meter relay, which was 23.26 seconds.”

Junior Claire Stevens also improved her time for the 400m by three seconds since the last time she ran indoor, with a time of 1:03.59.
Senior Jack Keenan continues to run times in the PA Top 50 and was ranked 30th in the state with a season-best time of 8.89 seconds in the 60m hurdles with his performance at Spire.

“The season went great,” Keenan said. “I improved a lot from last year and I keep finding out that I always have more to improve on. I came in 6th overall in the TSTCA championships and my favorite memory was beating my PR from last year by half a second in my first race of the year.”

With all of this, the head coach will miss the athletes he has been training since they were incoming freshmen.

“This senior class was one of the largest senior classes that came through the program since I began in 2017,” Shawn Ryan said. “This group has had a special bond since middle school track and field. The friendships among this group were another part that made this group so special.”

All of the athletes expressed how much they will miss their teammates, coaches, and departing seniors.

“I will miss the leadership that our seniors have shown throughout each season,” junior Karina Zwicker said. “They helped to build the program to where it is today.”

There is a lot for both the head coach and the team to look forward to in the future.

“Moving forward to the next indoor season, I am continuing to find ways to grow the program and get multi-sport athletes to utilize indoor track and field as a primary off-season training program with the opportunity to compete,” Ryan said.