Athlete Spotlight: David Huggins
David Huggins, a senior, has been running for South Salem all four years of his highschool career. Specializing in long distance, he runs the 5k for the Cross Country team in the Fall and in the Spring he runs the 1500m and 3k for Track and Field. This past Cross Country season he stepped up as a leader of the program and ran a 16.01 minute 5k which is the fourth fastest time ever posted by a South Salem athlete.
Huggins began running in middle school and enjoyed seeing the progress he made with each coming season. He made huge strides his freshman year cutting three minutes off of his 3k time which encouraged him to take the sport as seriously as he does now. He attributes a lot of his progress to Ms. Murdoch, his Cross Country coach.
“She’s one of the best coaches I’ve had, she pushes me really hard and is all around awesome” Huggins said.
Huggins, wearing number 316, competing in 5k this past Cross Country season.
Pushed by his teammates and coaching staff, Huggins has made significant time improvements year over year. Between his freshman season and today, his 1500m time has improved by over 60 seconds, his 3k dropped from 12:14 to 9:22 and his 5k improved by over five minutes.
Outside of hitting faster and faster PR’s, it is the community aspect of Cross Country that brings Huggins back each year. While Track and Field athletes are separated by their events, in Cross Country every athlete runs the same event, the 5k. This, paired with engaging practices and team spaghetti feeds makes the athletes feel less like a team and more like a family.
“Cross country is a lot of fun. There’s the team atmosphere so you can cheer each other on and you can expect that from your teammates. In track I like the speed aspect of it, like in the [1500m] it’s still somewhat of a distance, but I like the speed aspect of it because you have to go for almost a mile but you’re also going super fast.” Huggins said.
Now in his senior year, Huggins has begun to shift his attention towards the possibility of running in college. He is currently in contact with a couple of college coaches, and the possibility of making a college team is becoming more of a reality so long that he continues progressing his times in the upcoming Track season.
“The times I need to drop my times to [in order to make a college team] go in line with my personal goals I have going into the season. My goal for the 15 is as close as I can to sub 4 or sub 4, and they want me to drop to 4.00, 4.05. For the 3k it’d be close to 9 minutes or sub 9. Both of those are about 20 seconds faster than my pr which is a lot at that speed but I think I can do it.” Huggins said.
Huggins will have his first opportunity to make the required times at South’s season opening track meet at McMinnville Highschool on March 17.
