The days of competing as a part of Lovell and Cody teams are in the past as the Powell High School indoor track and field team will open its inaugural season on the road at Natrona County on Saturday.

Leading the way for the Panthers will be a familiar face, as coach Scott Smith agreed to take over the coaching role in addition to his outdoor track duties.

The new sport has attracted all sorts of athletes to the team, as 16 boys and 17 girls went out for the team, Smith said.

“We have some competitive kids who will do very well,” he said. “Our No. 1 expectation is that every athlete will be better at the end of the season than they were at the beginning of the season.”

A majority of the team will be coming into the season having not experienced indoor track, and will need to make adjustments to the 200 meter oval. However, Smith led the indoor track practices  in Powell for the Panther athletes who competed for Lovell in past years.

Smith said the main focus with more than 30 athletes is for them to get better each meet, working on the tighter corners that trade off with no wind and the warmer temperatures alongside field events that compete with better weather conditions.

The team has been practicing outside as often as they can, lessening the impacts of running indoors at PHS to train on the turf and clearing a track lane to run on in the stadium.

“We won’t do it all season I’m sure, but it sure is nice to do when we can,” Smith said.

Despite having a multitude of younger athletes on the team, Smith has some returning athletes from his outdoor teams that he hopes can help calm the younger nerves and help sharpen their focus.

In the team race Smith knows it will be difficult for both the boys and girls to compete for a team trophy, as unlike in outdoor track, some 4A schools will be competing in the lower classification. This will also be the first year that indoor track will award a 4A trophy alongside a trophy for teams that do not meet the 4A threshold.

Ten teams will compete in 4A, which means that six schools that compete in 4A will be competing alongside Powell for a team trophy and individual medals this year in the 3A classification.

“It is really hard to predict with six schools that are 4A in outdoor, and some of the 3A schools are co-oping with other schools and not really knowing what kids that do outdoor are doing indoor in our class,” Smith said. “It doesn’t really matter though, we are just going to go out and compete with everyone and see how much better we can get ourselves.”

The season will kick off this weekend in Casper, with a majority of the meets taking place in Gillette including the state championships that will take place at the end of February.