It was nice to be back on our home track for a seasonably cool afternoon for a late April track meet.  It certainly was a welcome feeling after our last two meets in the 80s.  The weather, combined with better competition in the form of high school runners, certainly made for a great afternoon of personal bests, particularly in the distance races.  When all was said and done, the boys earned 18 personal bests, not too far off the 23 we earned last week, and with way fewer entries this time around.

 

There were certainly various barriers to be broken yesterday: 5:30, 5:20, 4:00, 2:20, 13.00, 5-0, and 80-0.  However, none seemed as significant as the 5:00 barrier.  What seemed as a joke in passing about 12 years ago has grown into one of the most epic of challenges across the STC middle school running community...the white sunglasses for breaking 5:00 in the 1600.  In my 16 years at STC, there have only been 3, until yesterday.  LT Nguyen dropped 10 seconds off his time to destroy the 5:00 barrier by about 3.5 seconds, clocking 4:56.54, the 3rd fastest time in middle school history in the event.  He crushed the old 7th grade record of 5:04.62 and found his way onto the record board for the second time in less than a week.  He has the fastest 7th grade 1600 in the state, by over 12 seconds now, and is only behind one 8th grader in the state (4:53.00).  LT will receive his white sunglasses from Will Wise, current 12th grader and the most recent sub-5:00 middle school 1600 runner, in chapel tomorrow.  Coincidently, LT was in the same 1600 heat yesterday as Will, and also Ford Clark, the previous 7th grade 1600 record holder.

 

The history continued about a straightaway behind LT as James Edwards broke 5:20 in the 1600 to get himself on his second "elite performance" list in less than a week.  His 5:18.82 makes him one of only a handful of 7th graders to have ever broken 5:20.  Noah Smith had a double-dose of "elite performances" as he cracked one of the hardest lists in breaking 2:20 in the 800.  His 2:19.11 ranks him 10th all-time in that event and now puts him on the "elite performance" list in 4 events (100, 200, 400, 800).  He also lowered his 400 by over a second to 57.36, putting him 7th on the all-time list.  Ben Franks is inching closer to both the 400 and 800 "elite performance" lists, just 1.3 from the 400 and 4.3 from the 800.  Our trio of 400 runners also had a good day, dropping 10 seconds across the 3 of them.  Henry Nelson and Colin Wishnack both ran under 1:05 while Brodie Schlobohm dropped almost 6 seconds off his best 400 time.  Although personal bests in field events were hard to come by, both Ryan Smith and Colin Wishnack had shotput PRs, Colin's by almost 2 feet.

 

Although we don't really count these upper school meets in our record, we actually beat 3 high school teams in the meet yesterday, trailing only Freeman and our upper school team.