Our second and final Middle School Meet of the year was, honestly, a bit of a roller coaster. Some great individual gains were made by many athletes (15 personal records, several guys scoring for the first time or earning their highest personal points totals for the team, and one late-season "neeper"...) were unfortunately balanced by some hard knocks (DQs, injuries causing event entry scratches, unavoidable absences, and performances that showed our lack of personal preparation leading up to the meet). Keeping up a training regimen over the Christmas Break is always tough, and was made more-so this time by the weather & water issues that extended our time away from group practices. The rush to get ready for the meet, off of what was reported as a pretty minimal base, came back to haunt us. You get out of sport what you put into it, track especially so, a lesson we learned the hard way in some areas. As mentioned though, there were still quite a few bright spots...

The meet got started, as is the norm, with the field events.

Palmer and Miko had been itching to get back to the High Jump and see what they could do about picking off some old personal records in this discipline. Palmer had been eyeing the four foot mark since last winter, and this season so far had just been about getting back into form. After breaking his former personal best of 3-9, he went on to clear two more heights beyond that, settling in at 4-2 with some good looks at 4-4! This height also put him in a scoring position, picking up a point for the team for his 8th place performance. Well done! For Miko, the meet didn't quite swing his way this time, but he was able to tie his PR in pre-meet competition.

Ely, Ivan, and Chase are all new to Shot Put this season and the latter two were throwing for the second time in a meet, while Ely was our sole athlete to earn a "neeper" (New Event Personal Record) for the day! Ivan added another half inch to his already impressive PR from our first meet in December, while Chase tacked on a chunky 4.5 more inches from the varsity meet just before winter break! Both results were good enough to be in the top 8 for the day, with Ivan in 5th (4 points) and Chase in 7th (2 points).

Long Jump definitely followed the roller coaster vibe of the day. Corbett was really hoping to keep pushing into the 16 foot distances, but had to settle for just south of that line. However, his performance was still quite praise worthy: the team's highest finish of the day at second place (8 points). Freddy earned our sole PR in this event, adding another half inch to his best from earlier in the season.

While our meet didn't have pole vault, the varsity meet the next morning did and Ivan was again back at the fieldhouse for more track goodness! After competing all the previous night, he was able to match his personal best of 7 feet, showing that he's consistently hitting this height.

Our line-up for the 4x800m Relay looked a good bit different than it did back in December, swapping in two different guys for a shot at this distance in a meet (many thanks to Coach Carrier for getting the splits on this squad for us!). Eli led off the relay this time and got out to a great start with a 2-second PR over his previous relay leg from early December. McCoy kept us rolling in the second leg and passed off to Teddy who was competing for the first time in a meet at this distance. Teddy dropped 3 seconds from his best on his way to passing off the baton to Miko, who ran his fastest non-paced 800 ever and his first 800 in a meet situation. Finishing the race earned the team a 4th place and five points for the team.

The first sprinting event of the day had Ivan scoring us three points for his 6th place finish in the 55m Dash. Chase had a solid race and was only two places out of scoring position.

Ely's 1600 was Coach Dunn's favorite race of the day. He was our sole competitor in this event and showed what can happen when you execute a plan just the way we discussed. Improving his starting lap and then running steadily as he's done all season earned him a 20 second PR from his last 1600 in early December. Ely is now staring down the seven-minute mark (only 15.09 sec. to go!) and is looking to chip away at that over the coming weeks!

The 4x200m Relay was our heartbreak of the day. Excitement got the better of us and a poor handoff ended up disqualifying the team. Despite this, timing splits on the two unaffected legs of the relay showed definite personal records: Corbett broke 28 seconds for the first time and is now less than a second away from Elite status in this sprint distance and Freddy is only 0.15 seconds away from joining the sub-30 club after his 1.5 second improvement. Both Ivan and Palmer likely had a personal record as well even with the hand-off troubles, which will be exciting to see soon with a clean run.

Coach Cross was most excited for the "a-thousand" heading into the meet, and the guys did not disappoint. Miko ran a solid time to earn the team a point for his 8th place finish. Eli had been looking really good in the mid-distance events and his early December time looked ripe for the taking. When the dust settled, Eli cut 21 seconds from his previous time, effectively finishing half a lap in front of his December-self in a race that's only 5 laps long! Impressive! The battle to the finish line for the bronze was sweet icing on the cake and everything Coach Cross could have wanted.

In the 300m Dash, Corbett was back at the PR well. He was able to shave a half second off of his time from the Bruner Meet (scrimmage) in November on the way to a fourth place finish (his 13 points made him our high-scorer for the meet). Palmer got close to matching his PR and picked up three points for his 6th place while doing so. Chase had a GIGANTIC drop of four seconds (a huge amount in a sprint event), crushing his time from the Bruner Meet.

Our final race of the meet was the 3200. Our cross country duo of McCoy and Ely were back at the 16-lap monster. McCoy toughed his way through some discomfort to get to 3rd place in the race, picking up 6 points for the team. Ely snagged four points for his 5th place finish, but more importantly a HUGE personal record, dropping a whopping 107 seconds from the last time he'd competed in this event in early December. Ely is now less than 4 seconds away from being able to say that he can do two sub-8 minute miles back-to-back.

 

So, quite a few individual accomplishments worthy of praise and pride. This is one of the amazing aspects of Track & Field. There's almost always something positive to celebrate while simultaneously having clear areas for improvement for goal-setting. With our next two meets quick on the horizon and a solid week of consistent training back under our belts, we're looking forward to seeing what sort of response we'll see to some of the adversity we faced.