AMBOY – Michael Robinson can map out each of his five seasons as the Amboy girls track and field coach by the number of athletes he had on each team.

His first year was 2020 and COVID-19 wiped out the season. The next year, post pandemic, brought seven or eight girls to the team. Robinson’s third campaign was the first year of the co-op with AFC and there were 12-13 team members. 

Last year, the coach’s fourth year, didn’t have any AFC athletes, but 16-17 came out. 

This year, the AFC co-op is no more, and 23 girls are on the track team with five seniors, two juniors, 10 sophomores, and five freshmen. 

“We have 23 girls this year. It’s the most I’ve had in my coaching career. A couple of years ago when Bob Halberg was still the head coach, we had 22. We’ve eclipsed it this year,” said Robinson. “The numbers are pretty strong and I’m pretty happy about that. We’ll be able to fill every event this year, which has been a struggle for us over the last couple of years.

“It’ll be nice having a full event and putting an athlete in every event. You don’t have a shot of winning if you can’t fill the events. I think we have a good chance with a lot of people this year.”

The five seniors are Elly Jones, who is a three-time state qualifier, Lexi Ketchum, Kimber Zitelman, Skylar Ware, and Natalie Wamhoff (from LaMoille). 

The other two upperclassmen are juniors Alexis Cheever and Jenna Pinter (LaMoille).

“We have a lot of returners. We only lost three athletes from last year’s team. What we lost we replaced in a bunch of freshmen. What we lost, we replaced with numbers in different events. That’s a helping hand as well.”

Amboy has seven sophomores on the squad in Bella Yanos, Stephanie Nave, Samantha Nauman, Alex Palmer, Emilie Dempsey, Grace Althaus, and Kayla Oury.

There are three more sophomores as Abigail Micahel comes from LaMoille, and Jillian Anderson and Mazey Sterling are from Ohio.

The freshman ranks include Alexa McKendry, Aurbrey Wells, and Maddie Althaus who won the eighth grade 4x1-meter relay IESA State Championship. Morgan Kreiser and Lainey Davis are also freshmen with unlimited potential.

“The goal is to always compete but having the numbers to put the events and be good at them, not just throwing bodies in there, we’re going to able to compete in the throws, the jumps, and all the running events,” said Robinson. “They’re going to be good and right in the area to be able to do something.

“We want our best results to come at the end of the season. Whatever happens at the beginning is nice, but it comes down to the end. We have some good experience in our seniors and in the freshmen and sophomores that are coming in. They have experience at the lower levels and we’ll see how it translates.

“People are starting to see that we’re trying to put together a respectable program, not in just one or two athletes, but the entire program,” said Robinson. “We want people to compete and get better. Not everyone is going to have a chance to win state, but if they can improve from the beginning of the year until the end, that is the most important thing.”