Senior and class president Andrew Wartman is finishing up his last season on the Arrowhead Boys Track Team. Not only does Wartman sprint and triple jump, but he’s also a hurdler.

Wartman has been hurdling his whole high school career. A normal practice for a hurdler consist of a 30 minute warm up with the rest of the team doing a hurdle walk over, using bands, some static stretching and then a dynamic warm-up.
After he is finished with that part of his warm up, he then has to do some hurdle training. Hurdle training consist of a variety of drills that helps Wartman to work on his form while going over the hurdles and also his speed and trying to stay low to the hurdle to keep him time down.

On top of hurdling Wartman also has to go to jump training and sprinting training so he can be prepared in all of his events.

“The coaching staff works up very hard, but it definitely pays off which can be seen from our continuous success,” says Wartman.

Wartman is very fond of his coaches and the effort they put into him for him to become a better athlete. According to Wartman just the other day Coach Herriot [Head Coach] and Coach Smedema [Hurdle Coach] videoed his block starts and helped him adjust his block settings so he can get the best start he possibly can. Wartmans jump coach, Coach Steinbach also videos his jump sequence and gave him some pointers the help him improve his form.

“My coaches have always been supportive, motivation, and devoted to making me successful,” says Wartman.

Wartmans favorite event is the 300 intermediate Hurdles. According to Wartman it’s harder than a 400 sprint.

“The amount of endurance, speed and skill required for the 300M hurdles is great,” said Wartman.

This year for hurdles, Wartman is hoping to get his time down to 14.70 seconds for the 110 hurdles and 39.99 seconds for the 300 hurdles.

Wartmans favorite memory from track is that the hurdling crew has a very long tradition of “strikes” when the seniors and Coach Smedema give out “strikes” for doing stupid things or falling over a hurdle in front of the girls. Once someone has a consumed three strikes, he has to wear “the shirt”. The shirt hasn’t degrading comments and smells incredibly bad.

“I received the shirt for falling three times, but I was proud to have the honor of wearing it,” Says Wartman.

Overall Wartman is pushing to getting to the state meet this year. He has never been to the state meet.