Coming off a junior season in which she won two indoor state championships and one outdoors, Arundel’s Noel Evans was poised for a spectacular senior campaign. However, a sprained ankle cost her a month of her indoor season and gave her a long road back to her championship form. But it also gave her a newfound outlook on the sport, one that carried her to Capital Gazette 2024 girls outdoor track and field Athlete of the Year honors.
“This year, coming off of a good junior year, senior year is supposed to be full of good expectations; I was going to go run some crazy times,” Evans said. “And then my injury happened and I’m like, ‘This goal is farther away than I thought.’ But I think just coming back from the injury, I had to learn how to take pressures and expectations away from track and field and just enjoy the running aspect of it.
It helped me fall back in love with track.” Slowly but surely, Evans worked her way back. “I was in the gym a lot during my injury so that’s what kind of kept me in shape, but my first race back I ran a minute [in the 400-meter race].
I hadn’t ran a minute since sophomore year, so I was devastated after that,” she said. “But I kind of slowly began to build back my times. Each race I ran I would have a season’s best, even by a second.
” By the end of the season, she was better than ever. “I think the injury kind of pushed me to be a better athlete and I think that kind of showed at states,” she said. Evans won the.
