Name: Will Merchant
Age: 21
Hometown: Plainfield, NH
Sport: Track and Field
Major: Physics/Music
How long have you been a track athlete? How did you get into the sport?
I’ve done track for 12 years now. I got into the sport because one of my friends told me that I should show up to the fourth
and fifth grade showcase meet at the end of my fifth grade year.
What made you want to join the team at SLU?
I knew that wherever I ended up in college I wanted to be on the track team, I really chose SLU because both of my head coaches in high school were alumni from the SLU XCTF program.
What has been your favorite experience on the team so far?
Has to be when our mens team took second at the league championships last year. The Liberty League has some pretty stiff competition in track and field and SLU is a pretty small team for the league, so when we pulled out the win over every team except RPI, a team that won the championship basically due to their overwhelming numbers, it really felt like something special.
What makes SLU’s track team so unique?
The track team here is really unique because of the overall value each person adds to the team. If you total the number of points each team scored at last years indoor and outdoor league championships and divide it by the number of athletes on their roster you will find that SLU has the highest points-per-person stat in the league. Each person on our team is valued that much more because of our small size.
What is your competition/practice schedule like?
For the throws squad you can expect to be in the weight room four or five times a week depending on where the meet for that particular week falls, which is normally either on a Saturday or a Sunday. The rest of the week is a mix of event specific drilling, general strength circuits and a little bit of actual throwing. Because so much of our sport is about efficiently transferring as much energy as possible into the flight of an object, be it a discus, shot, hammer, weight, or javelin, we spend an inordinate amount of time practicing the smallest changes in what ends up being about one second of total movement in competition. It’s a very different training schedule from almost any other team.
Do you have any pre-competition rituals?
The day before we leave for a meet the throws squad will generally run a meet simulation, taking at most six throws at each event as a sort of cleaning pass to get all the bad throws out before the meet.
What do you do to celebrate a win?
Personally, I like to go home and sleep because meet days are exhaustingly long. On the shorter days meets can take anywhere from three to four hours. While an individual will probably only compete for about four minutes out of that time (the distance guys running a 10K are probably going to take a bit longer than that and the 100m guys will only hit 13 seconds if they have a really bad day), but the rest of the day is spent supporting your teammates on either end of the track.
Who would you say is your biggest fan?
I would say that my parents are probably my biggest fans. They are rarely able to make my meets in person, but are always watching the live results or the live stream to stay in touch.