Yesterday was a challenging day on many levels, most notably for our 7s who were outside since about 9:45am.  Some were up on the Challenge Discovery high ropes course for several hours in the heat and putting in more physical exertion than they would otherwise do sitting in a classroom.  We are used to Saturday (morning) meets against middle school competition, so after school versus high schoolers certainly felt a bit different.  Despite some people, me included, being outside for roughly 10 straight hours, we did have a good percentage of personal bests.  The jumps did not go as well for us (high jump is usually the hardest event to earn a personal best), but running and throwing certainly made up for that in terms of personal bests.

 

The personal bests were highlighted by 10 elite performances, most obtained in the 4x400 relay and the 3200.  Heat and distance running do not usually mix well, so I was curious how the 3200 would go for our trio who took to the track after 7:00pm.  Luckily, at that hour, the sun had begun to go down behind the trees, giving a small bit of relief.  Riding high off their sub-5:00 1600s last weekend, the goal for Charlie Branch, Langdon Sexton, and Davis Mullen (who ran 5:02 last Saturday) was to break 11:00, running about 1:22 a lap for 8 laps.  Charlie was particularly poised to break 11:00 after running 11:01 a few weeks ago.  They got out a few seconds faster in the first lap, but then settled into pace and Charlie and Langdon did a great job keeping close to pace on the 6th and 7th lap, when runners normally fall off.  Clearly everyone had something left, with each closing 1:14 or better in the final lap, which is 4:56 mile pace or faster.  When all was said and done, Charlie now ranks 3rd on the all-time STC MS 3200 list, earning a spot on the record board just about 2 seconds behind the 2nd best 3200 runner.  Langdon was only .6 seconds behind Charlie, now ranking 4th on the all-time STC MS list thanks to his 55-second improvement.  Davis had a nice drop from his previous best in the 3200, run during the indoor season, dropping 35 seconds.  Davis' time of 11:14 ranks him 9th on the all-time STC MS list and edges out Charlie's time from last year (by .28 seconds) for 2nd best 7th grade runner in STC MS history.

 

The other big event for us was the 4x400 relay which produced 3 individual elite performances, one of the fastest middle school 4x400 times in the state, and the 3rd best STC MS squad to ever run the event, earning a place on the record board.  Emmanuel Moore was the highlight of the individual performances with his leg of 58.45 to anchor the relay, good enough for 21st on the STC MS all-time list.  After running 1:00.80 to end last year and then 1:00.12 in this year's opening time trials, it was exciting to see Emmanuel break through that 1:00 barrier, and pretty forcefully at that.  Alexander Koussoglou and Elex Churchwell also had elite performances not too far off their personal bests and Tapiwa Mutoti had a solid 1.00.8 to start off the relay, despite an odd starting command and all the "traffic" of an opening leg of an 8-team waterfall start.  This quartet also teamed up for the 4x100 relay earlier in the meet, improving their 48.84 to 48.43.  Although they still remain as the 3rd best squad in STC MS history, they are pretty close to moving up as they are .05 seconds from 2nd, and .16 seconds from the record.  We will give that event one more crack next week at the JV Invite.

 

We also had a few other elite performances from Elex in the high jump and Lawson Clelland in the shotput, moving up to 9th on the STC MS all-time list in that event.  Corbett Kessel was close to an elite performance in the 300 hurdles (.43 away), a rare event to earn that elite performance.  Corbett dropped just under 2 seconds from his time at Collegiate last month, now having run the event just two times in his life.  Similarly, Palmer Telfian ran his 2nd 300 hurdles ever yesterday and dropped just over 2 seconds despite stopping and having to step over hurdle #4.  He likely would have dropped another 1-2 seconds had he been clean over that hurdle.  We had a smattering of personal bests in other events, including Jassen Jordan's trio of PRs in the high jump by 3 inches, the 400 by .8 seconds, and the 200 by over 4 seconds (from his 6th grade PE time).  In his debut meet of the season, Evan Clary dropped 12 seconds from his time trial 400 earlier this year.  Teddy Sterrett had a big drop of over 8 seconds in his 800 while Jahmari Kenney just missed an elite performance in that 800 by a few seconds.  Eli Holloway and Freddy Gatty both ran their first sub-1:05 400s, now giving us 7 in the 7th grade under 1:05 (of the 39 ever in STC MS history).

 

The throwing events yielded some pretty substantial PRs.  I already mentioned Lawson's 33.5" PR to earn an elite performance.  Ricky Gray, David Brown, and Gabe Wyatt all broke 20 for the first time ever, with Ricky leading that trio.  His 35" PR actually put him over 21 feet.  Speaking of 21 feet, on the heels of a great performance with the little disc at the Timberwolf Classic, Ricky improved his big disc PR by over 21 feet yesterday, cracking the 50-foot barrier.  Gabe and David also had nice discus PRs, with each of them coming within a few feet of the 50-foot mark.

We do not update our win/loss record after high school meets, but it is worth noting that we scored 18 points yesterday across 5 events.