A s exhilaration propels one runner racing towards the finish line, one player slamming the birdie over the net, and one swimmer diving off the block, their male and female teammates cheer them on.

Track, swimming and badminton share two characteristics: they are all coed, mainly individual sports.

Track athlete sophomore Kate Gross-Whitaker said that genders are divided at meets. Men and women are scored separately, not as an entire team score.

“I definitely prefer coed sports,” Gross-Whitaker said. “I just think the team dynamic, it kind of adds a little bit of variety in it and it’s more interesting.”

Because badminton has both singles matches and doubles matches, it is both an individual and team sport, badminton player senior Tina Lee said. All of the scores, male, female and mixed are added together for a whole team score.

“The coed team isn’t that different from any other,” Lee said.

Badminton has aspects of team, individual and coed dynamics all in one team. In games, some badminton players play in mixed doubles.

In all three of these sports, both genders train and practice together.

“Being an individual, it might be harder to see the bigger picture of you on the team because you are running your own races, you are doing your own workouts,” track captain junior Jordan Marcus said. “However, if you look at you becoming your best to make the team the best, if you have the team in mind for your actions, then it really influences your decisions and you’ll work great at the practices and in the meets.”

Gross-Whitaker said that although track is an individual sport, the feeling of having a team is still present.

“Everyone is supportive of each other,” Marcus said. “If one person is slacking or one person isn’t feeling well, everyone around them will help them and push them and maybe give them advice on how to run faster, or how to do this better, stuff like that. It’s a very supportive environment.”

Marcus said that because track is coed, there are many different personalities and people on the team, which creates a much closer and diverse team.

“I would consider [swimming] more of an individual sport mainly because basically for every event, it’s just you swimming,” swimmer senior Ian Taylor said. “A lot of the motivation is just beating your personal best, as opposed to winning the game or something, but I think there is a strong team aspect to it.”