Corona Forces Local Club Track Team to Train in Parking Lot.

Enya Pooler, Reporter

COVID-19 has kept civilians in, but will it also keep us from going out? COVID-19 has increased the number of cases as well as made human life cautious. Civilians around Seattle have been watched with close eyes when going out, and are restricted from parks around local areas.  

A local West Seattle club track team called Seattle Speed has been struggling to find places to work out and continue with their track training as professional athletes, as well as student-athletes, try to keep up with their season training. 

Head Coach Mike Cunliffe who is in charge of Seattle Speed, is bringing his athletes across West Seattle to find places to work out. 

The team began training at West Seattle Stadium, but West Seattle stadium has workers from the Seattle Parks Organization keeping a close eye on everyone who enters the track making sure you are six feet away from each other along with putting up signs around Around the West Seattle area that say “Crowded parks lead to closed parks.” These signs are restricting people from going to public parks to exercise. 

After being told to separate, the team moved to train at the Southwest Athletic Complex parking lot to proceed with the workouts as Seattle park workers have forced the team to leave the stadium as the team is in too big of a group to be left six feet apart. 

Student-athlete Kate Jenderzak, who will be attending and running for UCLA next year, speaks out about how training without a track has been hard with her performance. Jenderzak says, “as track athletes we are used to running on an actual track, now we are running on concrete, and my legs can feel the difference.”

Another student-athlete and daughter of Head Coach Cunliffe, Sophia Cunliffe, reaches out to talk about how this is impacting her training. 

“We have been kicked out of several tracks, but we got to do what we got to do to continue without training.” Cunliffe continues, “if running in a parking lot is our last resort, then we will do it.”  

As the team stays strong throughout this canceled track season and through Corona, they have been keeping healthy and remaining distant from each other but making it possible to keep putting in work to reach the goals they have as a team and as individuals.