After winning the Manhattan Borough Championship in 2008, the boys’ indoor track team suffered the loss of six of their top eight runners to graduation. “The departure of last year’s seniors has had a major impact,” sophomore James Chen said. “We’re much worse without the seniors from last year.”

Now the team is looking to repeat that feat with what is “basically a new team,” coach Mark Mendes said.

“We have smaller junior and senior classes than we did in previous years,” said junior and captain Daniel Hyman-Cohen. There are 12 juniors and eight seniors on this year’s indoor team, as compared to 16 juniors and 16 seniors on last year’s indoor team. This means that there is a great deal of pressure on Hyman-Cohen, the other juniors and the few seniors to perform.

The team is off to a promising start as it moves into the indoor season, and many members believe that it is on pace to win the Manhattan Borough Championships. To begin the season, Hyman-Cohen helped the varsity 4 x 800 meter relay team place eighth at the Jim McKay Games on December 7, 2008.

The performances of the freshmen and sophomores have been very promising as well. Stuyvesant’s sophomore cross-country team won the city championship this year, and the freshmen are in great form as the indoor track season begins. Freshman Konrad Surkont placed first in the 1000 meter run at the Jim McKay games in three minutes 1.55 seconds, followed about eight seconds later by freshman teammate Genghis Chau, who took second place. These two also led Stuyvesant’s 4 x 800 meter freshman relay team to second place, with a total time of 10 minutes 40.46 seconds.

One of the few Stuyvesant runners to participate in the Day of Distance, a meet at the Armory, on December 12, 2008, Surkont once again placed first in his event, this time the 1600 meter run. He finished in five minutes 11.1 seconds, just fractions of a second ahead of the second- and third-place runners.

“He’s definitely showing a promising start,” sophomore Oren Bukspan said of Surkont. “For the rest of the team we also now have a little bit of an incentive. It’s a pride issue.”
Although many of the stars of the championship 2008 are no longer running, Chen said that the team expects to once again win the borough championship in indoor track. However, on a city-wide level, Stuyvesant expects to face much tougher competition, such as perennial championship contenders Midwood and Sheepshead Bay High Schools. “In indoor track we’re not even a threat to win the city championships,” Chen said. According to Bukspan, this is because Stuyvesant is focused mainly on cross-country and long-distance running, while the major events of the indoor season are sprints.

Hyman-Cohen and Chen recognized that much of this optimistic start to the indoor track team’s season can be attributed to Mendes’s coaching. “He’s a very good coach,” Hyman-Cohen said. “He helps us get a lot better, and helps keep us organized.”

For a team that expected to have a sub-par season following the loss of many of its top athletes, the future of the boys’ indoor track team is looking surprisingly bright. “The rebuilding process has begun,” Mendes said, “and it’s well underway.”