DANVILLE — With scholastic sports being cut from beleaguered budgets nationwide, news about a local sports program expanding is cause for celebration.
Danville athletic director Christian Toombs has announced that the school’s track program will expand to include a seventh- and eighth-grade team this spring season. The team, which will run a league-only schedule for the next couple of years, promises to develop budding talent to augment the existing varsity track team in the coming years.
“We have some good individual athletes with our high school track team,” said Toombs. “Obviously, with the size our school, we don’t have many kids to choose from. At the high-school level, we have 22 kids on the track team and we just need to get those numbers up. The most logical thing to do is to get interest going at the lower levels. We had 50 kids at our meeting two nights ago so we’ll just have to see how it goes.”
Toombs hopes that new Danville track coach Matt Proper will be able to use this newly expanded program to build a winning team.
“He is just chomping at the bit to get started,” said Toombs. “I know that he’ll do a great job.”
It was not just a move that will benefit the kids, it was also a move that was economically prudent.
“Track does not need as much funding as most other sports,” said Toombs. “We have a lot of things in place, that we already needed, so it was just a matter of the interest with the kids.”
