By Michael Pedro
“Trackies,” rejoice. After what seemed like an eternity, track and field is finally getting added to the lineup of collegiate sports here at Western New England University. When the Spring 2025 season rolls around, outdoor track and field will be running its inaugural season.
Rumors that the sports would be added had been circulating for quite some time. But on March 8, 2024, Director of Athletics and Recreation Jennifer Kolins announced that Western New England would add men’s and women’s outdoor track and field as its 22nd and 23rd varsity sports. Competition on both the men’s and women’s sides will begin in the 2024-25 academic year.
The announcement was more than a quarter-century in the making. “I was a first-year student-athlete in the first season of our current cross-country program in 1999,” said cross-country coach Jonathan Harris, “and I have been waiting for WNE to add a track team ever since. You cannot overstate how excited I am to expand our program and make a name for Western New England on the regional and national track and field scene.”
According to Harris, student-athletes have responded positively to the announcement. “The current members of our cross-country team are really looking forward to being part of the inaugural track season [next] spring,” he said. “They all ran track in high school and are excited to get back into that world and show how much they have improved during their time here. I am also getting a lot of messages from members of other teams who are interested in adding track & field to the sports they already participate in here, as well as students who competed in high school track and are enthusiastic about being part of a team and getting back into athletic competition again,”he claims.
Harris thanked Kolins for her efforts in getting this off the ground. Kolins “has been a huge proponent of the addition,” he said, “and really put a lot of hard work into getting this program from an idea to reality in just the last five or six months.”
Optimism is at an all-time high, and Harris thinks the new track team will make a splash from the get-go. “You never know what to expect in your inaugural season,” he noted, “but I am really optimistic that we will be competitive in the Commonwealth Coast Conference right from the start.”
The successes of the recently-added women’s ice hockey and women’s wrestling teams have shown that victories can come quickly and Harris thinks track and field will be no different. “With the amount of positive energy on campus around track in just the first couple of weeks since the announcement, it’s hard not to have a good feeling about the future. With a group of dedicated, hard-working, and enthusiastic athletes, I think we can make a big splash in 2025.”
