Feature Stories

Jared Louf-Woods is the Little East Conference Men's Indoor Track Athlete of the Year.

Feature Stories

Captain's Corner: Jared Louf-Woods '18

A perspective on practice, training, and success at meets during the winter intersession.

The College Now graduate shares his perspective on practice, training, and success at meets during the winter intersession. Adapted from the January 2017 Corsairs Track and Field Newsletter.

The last two weeks have been filled with everyone on the team focusing on personal goals to achieve at our meets. With the support we give each other, everyone's goals are obtainable. The campus is very empty right now, so all we have is each other and it has been really great. Pushing each other at practice to work hard.

Fine-tuning skills

We also like spending a lot of down time recovering from training and just having fun. Intersession is a good change for a student athlete. College can be stressful with academics, so this break is a nice change for us. Really giving us the ability to fine tune our skills and really just learn a lot about yourself. It’s always good to push yourself and have the support of everyone around you pushing themselves, too.

We are very lucky to have an Athletic Department that supports us. One example is providing dining every day throughout intersession. The atmosphere here at UMass Dartmouth is supporting us in every way, which makes it easier for the athletes to compete.

This past Saturday's track meet was great for our entire team. In the throwing events, we had a lot of PR's [personal records] and qualifying throws for DIII New England's and DIII Open New England's. On the track it is great to see your teammates competing while you cheer them on. There is so much going on at once, but with the support from everyone it makes it well worth it.

The best part of success

I love to walk around to different events and see how my teammates are doing, whether it is yelling at them to finish their race at the finish line or watching an approach for a jump—it is truly awesome. To work hard and see the fruit of our labor is truly fun, and to have great coaches and teammates makes it all worthwhile.

The best part about our success on the team is that it is coming from everywhere — from upperclassmen to freshmen and on both sides, men and women. It's great to watch your teammates’ success because you physically go through the same hard work and know what it takes to compete and be great. Our throwing coach Darren always says: "there is no secret, put in the work and see the results. It's very simple."

Being around my coaches and teammates, I've learned that it’s only simple when you're willing to put in the work. In track, that can mean running hundreds of sprints or miles, doing jumps, or making throws. We have a team that is willing to work, coaches who are dedicated, and the great opportunity to represent UMass Dartmouth. That's why it's always a great day to be a Corsair!