SFCC Track & Field Prep For Season Two

The State Fair Community College (SFCC) Roadrunners track and field team is busy preparing for the program’s second season and Head Coach Brad Hagedorn likes what he has seen from his squad.

“Our culture is good,” said Hagedorn. “We are working hard. Wyatt Irwin is a returning finalist in the high jump. He has been training well and we hope to see a return to the podium at the National Championships. I’m very excited about a couple of our long sprinters. David Brown and David Ceballos have just been crushing workouts. David Brown was a state champion in Kansas back in 2020. He was also an all-state football player. David Ceballos is another non-traditional kid who is a year or two older. We are very excited to see how well they compete. We also have a couple of freshmen in the short sprints and multi-events who look good.”

The Roadrunners will face a challenging schedule which will begin on January 21 at Pittsburg State University in Pittsburg, Kansas. SFCC will travel to the University of Central Missouri in Warrensburg the following week. SFCC will begin the month of February at Northwest Missouri State University Feb. 4, Washburn University Feb. 11, and Illinois College on Feb. 17. The NJCAA Indoor National Championships will begin Mar. 3 in Topeka, Kansas.

“Brandon Allen is a kid, with high character, who has been injured but still goes to every practice and leads the team off the field.” said Hagedorn. “Landon Mason is an intelligent kid, who helps Coach Jeff Crouch run the throwers group. Landon has stepped up and been another good leader for us. A year from now, I think we’ll have another good group of leaders once our freshmen have been through the college experience for a year.”

The outdoor season will begin at Central Methodist University on Mar. 18. SFCC will participate in five other outdoor meets throughout the spring in preparation for the national championships. SFCC will travel to Hobbs, New Mexico for the NJCAA Division I Outdoor National Championships to begin on Thursday, May 18.

Coach Hagedorn has some goals he would like to see his team accomplish this season.

“We want to try to have as many qualifiers as possible for the national meet and ultimately make a podium,” said Hagedorn. “Our new kids, we want them to be better than they were in high school. If we can do that the first race out of the gate, then we did our work throughout the fall and winter. We want to continue to run personal bests and then we let happen what may happen.”

Coach Hagedorn sees a couple of keys to success for his team this season

“The first key to accomplishing our goals will be consistent daily practice,” said Hagedorn. “We don’t want to miss multiple days because were injured, we don’t want to miss multiple days if we’re sick if we can help it. If we can just do the work and be consistent once we transition the training to our in-season model, then we start getting fast and being competitive.”

-- David Rohrbach, SFCC Athletics