To kick off the new semester, I had the pleasure of sitting down with freshman Caleb Payne from the track and field team to ask him a few questions about himself and the team going into the new season.
“It’s been pretty good,” said Payne when asked how the season’s been. “We started training in October… When we got back, that’s when we went to full weeks of training, and we just had our first track meet.” I followed up, asking how the meet went, to which he said, “It went pretty good. I ran a PR in the 60… I ran 71. My senior year, it took me til the end of the year to hit 71, so it was good to open up the same way.”
From there, I asked him if he thought that may have contributed to him being named one of the athletes of the week, as well as what that title means to him. He replied, “I think so. Opening up with that PR and then breaking a couple records and qualifying for the Christian Nationals… It means a lot honestly. Ever since I had seen how they do this [athlete of the week], it’s just really cool, recognizing athletes. I honestly didn’t expect to get it my first race… More importantly, I’m just really trying to improve and have a good freshman year.”
“We’re looking pretty decent,” said Payne when asked about the state of the team this season. “We’re still a new program, so where we have some standouts, we also have people who are more developing. We’re definitely improving from where they were last year.” Continuing from there, I asked him who some of those standouts are. He said, “Definitely Emmanuel Dut. He’s going to be phenomenal for us. Some guys like Coleman Anderson… Luke Holton… Mostly distance guys, like Dan [Kersey] and all of them. On the sprints, Jacob [Edmonds], Raph[ael Esteban]. Kind of all around on the team.”
Next, I asked if he has any personal or team goals for the season, to which he said, “As a team, we haven’t discussed much of goals, other than [that] coach has expressed that he wants to go to Conference and be as competitive as possible. For me, I want to qualify again in the 200 for indoor Christian Nationals and hopefully qualify [for] outdoor. It would be nice to be All-Conference, All-Christian Nationals, All-American. That’s kind of the goal.”
Lastly, I asked if he had anything he wanted to say to the rest of the Asbury student body. He said, “Thank you for the support. I’ve gotten a lot of congratulations from people. I really appreciate that. We have a track meet coming up in April, so it would be great to have a crowd out there to watch us; April 11th and it will be at our home facility.”
Photo courtesy of AU Athletics.
