Watertown Preseason Practice: Day 1 
Watertown
Division: 1
Enrollment: 1314
Head Coach: Chris Mertens - 8th year as head coach.
Conference: Wisconsin Little Ten
Conference Schools: Beaver Dam, Hartford Union, Oconomowoc, Slinger, Watertown, West Bend East, West Bend West, and Wisconsin Lutheran.
Left: High jumper Morgan Gromowski.
Right: Taylor Naatz at the 2012 W/TFA Indoor Championships Meet held at UW-Whitewater. Naatz finished in 1st place.
Top header photo of Corinne Franz by Lisa Franz.
Taylor Naatz finishing 1st in the 400m dash at the UW-Whitewater 2012 Nelson-Daniels Classic.
Taylor Naatz finished 5th in the D1 WIIA 400m dash at La Crosse in 2012.
Distance runner Emma Flegel
Photo above by Kirk Wackett
Angela Breunig
Above photo by Kirk Wackett. Photo on right by Bruce Magnuson
Above: Head boys and girls coach Chris Mertens addresses the track team prior to their first practice of the 2013 season.
Above center: Assistant distance coach Dave Flegel. Above right: Distance coach Kirk Wackett.
Right: Throws coach Carrie Canfield explains a drill to some of her throwers.
Below left: Dave Hanssen is the HJ coach. Below right L-R: Adam Coyer [LJ coach] and Tim Gifford [dash coach].
Not pictured: PV coach Bruce Magnuson and volunteer PV coach Evan Dexter.
Athletes divided up into three groups: Throwers, distance and dash and jumps athletes. The dash/jumps group started with a three part drill on arm and hand position. Then a series of line drills with a stress on footwork followed.
Above: Coach Wackett led his distance runners through a series of form drills before the runners left the Field House to continue their workout outside.
The throw group went through a series of footwork drills [above] before Coach Canfield sent her group [below] to the dash-jumps group.
Corner
Drill
Coach Gifford set up and conducted a four corner drill aimed at building a core conditioning for the dash-jumps and throw athletes.The athletes divided up into 4 groups with veteran track and field athletes paired up to insure a competitive drill. The four groups then went to one of the corners of the Field House.
Monday was also parent-teacher conference day at Watertown high school. Some of the coaches had to leave practice in order to attend their conferences.
Coach Gifford stressed that the first day four corner drill should allow each athlete to get acquainted with their capabilities. In addition another stress was to get to know your teammates. Starting at a 70% level of exertion athletes ran for a prescribed amount of time around the four corners set up in the Field House. All athletes should run between an effort level 7 - 8 (70% - 80%). There were two intervals at 20 seconds, followed by two intervals of 15 seconds, followed by two intervals of 10 seconds. The 'walk-backs' also had a time limit.
During the walk time back to their original positions athletes were required to get to know a teammate that was new to the team. After a certain amount of cycles athletes were required to take a water break which also had a time limit.