By Melanie L.
While it’s likely the majority of people understand conventional track and field, it is rare that people know what a modified version of track looks like.
“Unified Track is an MIAA sport mixed with general education and special education kids that do certain events that are in the same league with the same program,” said Ms. McGinnis, the head coach of this new sport at Duxbury High School.
This is the Duxbury Unified Track’s second year of becoming a team. The events that unified track participates in include the 100, 400, 800 sprints and the 4 by 100 relay. For field events, they do long jump, shot put, and javelin.
So far, Duxbury Unified Track has had one meet against Hingham, where they were greatly intimidated by the size of Hingham’s unified track team that consisted of 70 students whereas we have 10. It may have been a challenge but Shannon C., the senior caption of the unified track team, said, “The track meet was very long but we all had fun and that’s what matters.”
The Duxbury Unified Track team participates in six meets, including sectionals and states, and have practice after school twice a week for one hour. Tammy H., a senior, who spent her first year participating in unified track, said, “I like it a lot. I like the exercise, and I enjoy running around and doing something active.”
Ms. McGinnis is hoping to grow the program further in the future because of the fact that, “We are uneven with the makeup of the team, but it allows us to have more than one athlete with partnered student so it’s kind of a positive thing but we would also like the program to grow.”
As Ms. McGinnis and the students of this team hope, Unified Track will likely continue as a spring sport here at DHS for the years to come.
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