Severna Park senior Carson Sloat doesn’t like to talk about his freshman year on the junior varsity indoor and outdoor track teams. Who can blame him? Sloat didn’t come close to winning anything and he says he ran “very slow” times. Butthings changed dramatically during his sophomore year.
Sloat’s times dropped in several events significantly—shaving 30 seconds off his 1,600-meter run and another 16 seconds off the 800—and he started winning big-time. Sloat ran the first leg on the 3,200-meter relay team that won a Class 4A state track and field championship in May of 2019. Not a bad finish for a runner struggling a little more than a year earlier.
“That’s when I knew I could do great things,” says Sloat, noting the keys to his surge were a big dose of confidence and approaching races differently. “I realized I had a future in this. I really wanted to focus on track. Before that, I was like, ‘I am on the running team. I like the guys, but I don’t know if this is my future.’”
Sloat, who also competes in cross country, went from unknown to one of the Falcons’ stars faster than he could imagine. He developed into such a standout, that Navy and Air Force started recruiting him. Mississippi, Elon, Virginia Commonwealth, and Boise also have shown interest in Sloat, who carries a 3.9 weighted grade-point average and took four advanced placement classes this past school year.
“I have been coaching for 21 years and I haven’t had too many kids like him,” Severna Park Coach Josh Alcombright says. “He is tough, fast, has a lot of heart, and is very coachable. He is really dedicated and will do whatever he has to, to be the best he can be. It’s rare to find a kid who has all these elements.”
The 6-foot, 145-pound Sloat proved he can really excel in individual events as well. He took fourth in November of last year in the state cross country championships, slicing nearly three minutes off his time in the 3.1-mile run since 2017.
Then came the highlight of his career in February. Sloat captured a state indoors championship in the 1,600-meter, after garnering county and regional titles in the same event.
“More state titles are something my coach and I are focused on,” Sloat says. “Winning them has really opened up my eyes. I know I am on that level. I can actually chase the fast times now instead of just worrying about qualifying for the state meet.”
Sloat has other lofty goals besides winning titles this winter and spring. He’s sharply focused on beating the 51-year-old school record in the 800 (1:53.40), which Gene Munger holds. Jonah Lane’s school record in the 1,600 (4:15.50) has caught Sloat’s attention as well.
“Those have motivated me to train harder,” says Sloat, who runs 65 miles a week. “It’s what I think about during workouts. Trying to break that 1970s something record is the reason I am training so hard now.”
Sloat wouldn’t be in the position he is now if not for his mental mastery of competitive running. He says it all goes back to joining the varsity team in the winter of 2017. “When I got up the varsity, I was training with guys I’d looked up to for a year and a half,” he says. “I figured if I could workout with these caliber of guys, why can’t I race with them? It kind of changed my whole mental outlook. It gave me a ton of confidence going into meets that I didn’t have before that.”
And Sloat also took to heart more than ever the advice from his father, James, who swam at Thomas Johnson High in Frederick and Penn State. Which is to say he finally understood what he’d been telling him for years.
“He went through the same stresses of dealing with races,” Sloat recalls. “His focus was always, ‘I’m here, I deserve to be here, so I’m going to race as hard I can. I am going to treat this as my last meet.’ Once I finally understood all of that, I could race better.”
All his hard work in and out of the classroom could lead Sloat to admission into the Naval Academy. For him, it would be a like a dream come true. He wants to be a fighter pilot. “I would go into Naval Aviation,” he says. “I think it would be really cool to fly fighter jets. Growing up, we watched the Blue Angels every year. I have always been fascinated by them. The Naval Academy is an option I could never go wrong with.”
