GREENVILLE – The Greenville Green Wave track and field program has record numbers out for the 2023 season for both the high school and junior high programs under the direction of veteran GHS head coach, Bill Plessinger.
The combined boys and girls high school roster numbers 117 athletes and the junior high program comes in at 93 for a total of 210 athletes overall.
“It’s crazy out here,” said Plessinger at a recent practice. “We’ve never had this many kids out for track before.”
“I don’t know what it is – I don’t know but we have a lot,” Plessinger added. “I have these kids in class in the fifth and sixth grades – I try to prep them.”
Coach Plessinger has a high school team made up of many younger athletes with a few veterans to provide leadership and talent.
The program has 61 high school girls with 41 of them coming from the freshman and sophomore class. With the junior high coming in with 50 junior high girls it gives the program a total of 111 girls.
“Track is one of those sports you never know what you have until you start throwing kids in events,” noted Coach Plessinger. “We’re going to have an entertaining team. We’re young, we are real young. We have some seniors but we only have five boy seniors and maybe 10 girl seniors. We have some serious talent, we have some kids that are going to go to the next level, some kids going to college.”
“The girls are going to be really strong in field events,” Plessinger added. “We have almost everybody returning plus some new kids that are really good. The boys will be pretty strong in field events because they’re a year older – we have some good young boys too.”
Coach Plessinger and his staff run a week long track and field camp each summer for kids going into the second grade through incoming eighth graders that draws big numbers each year.
“Track camp is what makes our program,” said Coach Plessinger. “You look at the junior high numbers, the high school numbers, most of these kids have been through track camp. Most of these kids, 80 percent of the girls all came to track camp, 70 percent of the boys.”
Greenville will travel to Troy for the Troy Up and Running Invitational, Saturday, March 25 and will host Troy and Vandalia-Butler, Monday, March 27. Greenville returns to Troy, Wednesday, March 29 for the Troy Relays and return home to host the Greenville Invitational, Saturday, March 29. Wednesday, April 12 Greenville will host Piqua in a HS/JH Duel meet.
“I kind of front load our schedule so we have a lot of meets early to see what we have so as we get later in the year that gives everybody a chance to show me something early,” explained Plessinger. “The first seven days we have four meets and we do that every year. We have five home meets this year.”
Greenville distance coach, Stephanie Lind stepped away after 10 years of coaching the Green Wave distance runners but will stay on as the Wave’s head cross country coach. Lind’s assistant, Missy Riethman takes over for Coach Lind.
“Steph and I had talked about it most of the winter and I thought I had her convinced to stay around another year or two,” said Coach Plessinger. “It is what is best for her – it was hard. We have been together for 10 years. It’s like breaking up a marriage. There comes a time and family is most important.”
