If there’s one thing you want on a track team, it’s speed and Alyssa Ward and Hayden Kilpatrick have just that.

The Tabor Academy students, and April athletes of the month, each broke multiple school records this year, and they’re not done yet.

Ward, a junior from Teaneck, NJ, didn’t start track until she came to Tabor her freshman year.

This season alone, she has broken three records.

After tying with the school’s record last year, Ward added two inches to her high jump for a 5’4”.

In the long jump, she broke Tabor’s 1990 record by a quarter of an inch with a 17’2”.

“I wasn’t expecting to break that one,” said Ward.

She also broke her own record in the 200-meter race, shaving off two-tenths of a point for a finishing time of 26.8 seconds.

“I was always told that I was fast,” said Ward, who has other track stars in her family.

Ward also made the varsity soccer team for two years in a row, but said she is giving that up next year to pursue dance.

Despite her heavy involvement in sports, Ward said she isn’t the type of person who has to be on the move. “I’m that person who, once all my activities are done, I’d rather sit in my room and read a book or watch a television show,” she said.

Fellow track star Hayden Kilpatrick is quite the opposite.

Aside from track in the spring, the Mashpee native plays football in the fall, wrestles in the winter, and works/works out at a gym all summer.

“I lift everyday. When I’m not working out, I run – on the road, through the woods – it helps clear my mind,” said Kilpatrick.

The former Mashpee High School hurdler moved to Tabor this year and broke the 110-meter hurdles by two-tenths of a point at 15.4 seconds. He did the same with the 300-meter hurdles.

“At my old school I broke both my records, so it was a goal when I came here,” said Kilpatrick, who started hurdling in seventh grade.

Being a hurdler takes dedication, he said. “You’re always the last guy at practice. You always have to stretch longer; warm-ups take longer.”

In competition, the difference between clearing a hurdle and tripping up, explained Kilpatrick, is partly a mind game.

“My mentality is you never want to go over it, you want to go through it,” he said.

Next year, both Ward and Kilpatrick want to break the records for the 400-meter race and the 4x4 relay in their divisions.

“I’m always trying to improve my times and break my own records,” said Kilpatrick.