Wow!  That was quite a season opener for the track squad today.  The weather wasn't as bad as predicted with the clouds and breeze lingering a bit longer into the afternoon than expected.  I want to thank Coach Dunn for starting the meet (and running high jump), Coach Cross for clerking the runners before their races (along with 10th grader LT Nguyen) and running shot put, Coach Reck for helping set-up and helping Coach Cross with shot put, and Coach Hornik for balancing her role as a supportive mom to her daughter Sienna and supporting our boys while also helping with check-in.  Sienna had a great day for St. Catherine's by the way with a runner-up in high jump and 4th in the 100 while also anchoring the 4x100 team to victory.  It is not an easy task for the boys to be basically managing themselves for a long day of track since most coaches were occupied.  I thought our veterans did a great job helping everyone handle that lack of coach availability very well.  I think we can do a better job on our warm-ups and cooldowns during the meet as well as trying to manage our energy throughout the meet as we did start to fade a bit as we got to the last few events.  A mixture of keeping up with our weekend running homework, avoiding being out in the sun for too long, and making the most out of practice each day will help the boys get stronger and be better able to handle the 3-4 events of a meet.  This all being said, it was a great day with no DQs or missed events (other than injury), 29 personal bests, 12 elite performances, and 1 new update to the record board in my classroom (and almost a STC MS record).  And, although the score is not our main focus, we actually had all 18 runners score in some capacity today, so it was a true effort.

 

The field events got us started off well with 11 of our 29 personal bests in those 4 events.  The high jump saw a near school record as Elex Churchwell cleared 5-3, well over the 5-0 elite performance number, only trailing two STC MS boys in history at 5-4.  He did take attempts at 5-5 to try and get the record, but came up a bit short.  Luckily the season is pretty young, so keep an eye on that event as the season progresses.  This performance earned Elex a spot on the record board in my room as it was in the top 3 all-time for STC MS.  Elex snagged another elite performance in the long jump with his jump of 16-10.5, giving 5 elite performances on the season.  This puts him 15th all-time in that event, where we already had Corbett Kessel who sits in 18th place.  The shot put was by far our best event for improvement as all 5 throwers had a personal best.  Alexander Koussoglou, who had an elite performance in practice on Thursday, went 5" further today to push him to 12th in the STC MS all-time list.  The other 4 in the event also had personal bests by at least 17.5 inches or longer.  David Brown was the big jump of the day improving by almost 32 inches.  David also crushed his discus PR by almost 16 feet!  Charlie Branch was the other discus guy to get a personal best as he improved 8 inches from this past Thursday, breaking 50 feet for the first time ever.

 

In the running events, there was a lot of excitement from the get-go.  The 4x800 relay was the first event of the day and thanks to some big PRs, including a herculean effort on the anchor leg from Langdon Sexton, the team earned an elite performance, 12th in STC MS history, and were just about a half second from the victory.  Jahmari Kenney led off with one of the best "debut" 800s I have seen in my 18 years coaching here.  He dropped over 15 seconds, running a 2:24 lead-off leg, just 4 seconds from the elite performance number.  Corbett Kessel followed that with an 11-second PR.  Eli Holloway ran solid, just over a second off his best, and then Langdon Sexton went after the 800 elite performance time on his anchor leg.  After just missing on several occasions in the past at 2:20.something, nothing was left to chance today.  He ran a 2:15.75 which ranks him 8th in STC MS history.  The B team in the 4x8 also had some nice PRs with Palmer Telfian dropping almost 9 seconds and Jeb Jernigan dropping 6 seconds, filling in for a sick Teddy Sterrett.  Jack Bodt got tripped badly at the beginning of his leg, but pushed through it for his teammates to be able to finish the race.  We followed up that 4x8 with a 1-2 finish in the 100 as Alexander and Tapiwa Mutoti went 1-2, both with elite performances.  Kouss now ranks 18th in STC MS history and Tapiwa ranks 22nd.  More importantly in the 100, we had a perfect 8 out of 8 when it came to personal bests.  Aveon Wynn got his 1st time in the event, despite battling the pollen today and Jeb had the biggest drop of anyone, 1.27 seconds, even after running that 800 relay leg just before the 100.  In the 1600, Charlie was our lone entry.  This was a little bit odd to me today as we have been a distance powerhouse for years.  However, Charlie certainly carried that mantle well as he nearly broke 5:00 in the 1600 to earn the "white sunglasses" (more on that later this season if necessary).  He dropped over 5 seconds from the fall running 5:03.53.  He now ranks 12th all-time for STC MS runners, just tenths behind his cross country teammate, Davis Mullen, who ran his 5:03 at the end of the indoor track season.  This momentum carried into the 4x100 relay where the team of Elex (filling in for Jassen), Freddy Gatty, Alexander, and James Hyman earned an elite performance and now rank 24th on our STC MS all-time list.

 

At this point in the meet, the personal bests started to dwindle a bit.  The 400 was up next and Tapiwa was our lone personal best.  It was also a well-executed race for Tapiwa to notch the win and lower his already elite performance personal best.  He went 59.39 to move to 23rd on the STC MS all-time list.  His time ranks him 6th all-time for 7th grade 400s.  Despite a 1-2-4 finish from Jahmari, Langdon, and Eli in the 800, it was Miko Aboutanos who had the lone PR in this event.  We got back to PR mode in the 200 and Alexander dropped over a half second to lower his already elite performance PR to 25.50, ranking him tied for 11th on the STC MS all-time list.  Ricky logged his first time after a lane violation DQ during our 200 time trials.  Jeb once again dropped around 1.3 seconds as he did in his 100 earlier in the meet.  James Hyman was only .03 seconds over his PR, so not too bad.  After Charlie jogged to an easy win in the 3200, the 4x400 teams closed out the meet.  The A team just missed giving us all elite performances for the 3 relay events.  Their time of 4:13.15 was just 1.15 seconds over the elite performance time of 4:12.  However, although the team did not get the elite performance, the lone personal best in the 4x4, A or B team, was Jahmari who broke 1:00 with his split of 59.60.  We do count relay splits 400 and longer as elite performances should an athlete beat the time standard.  Jahmari's time ranks him 33rd STC MS all-time and this puts him 8th among 7th grade 400 times for STC MS.

 

We won 5 of the 6 individual running events (2nd in the other one), won 2 of the 3 relays (2nd in the other one), and won 3 of the 4 field events (2nd in the other one).  We had a 1-2 finish in the 100, 800, and long jump with a 1-3 finish in the high jump.  Despite not having 5 of our athletes and 2 others who had to leave early, it was a dominating win for the team.  We scored 195 points to the runner-up St. Bridget's score of 84 points.  Behind them was 55 from the third place team, Our Lady of Lourdes.  We beat all 10 visiting teams in attendance, so our record goes to a perfect 10-0.  Individually, we had the top 6 scorers in the meet with Alexander leading the way at 32.5 points, Tapiwa at 23.5, Elex at 22.5, Charlie at 22, and Langdon and Jahmari each at 20.5.  Corbett was the 8th individual scorer with his 15 points in an abbreviated meet for him.  A big win in the first meet is great for confidence, but it can sometimes backfire in the sense of thinking this is how it is always going to be.  As we run other schools, especially the public schools that go to the Timberwolf Classic on April 12th, we will certainly be tested.  These next two meets will be especially tough from a scoring standpoint with half of the team missing the Collegiate meet on Thursday for the school music trip, and we also have several missing for the April 12th meet at Midlothian.  This is why we focus on improvement at the meets rather than score.  Sometimes we will just not have the manpower to allow us to accumulate more points than other teams.