We went into our annual relay meet a bit shorthanded, missing 8 of our 24 on the roster.  The remaining 2/3 of the team did a great job, keeping a winning tradition alive for the Saints.  We have hosted this meet since 2017 (thanks to Covid, it was not run in 2020 and 2021).  We have won all 7 of these meets (the St. Catherine's girls have won 5 of the 7).  This year's victory was the smallest point total and margin of victory for any of our teams over those 7 years, but a win is a win.  We did also have two meet records, 2 "almost" meet records, 5 individual elite performances, and 4 relay elite performances, which included a new middle school record.

 

This meet is a bit challenging to rack up a bunch of personal bests as we do not count relay splits for anything below 400 as a comparable result.  This being said, all legs of the 4x100 and 4x200 relays, the first three of the super sprint medley relay, and the first two of the sprint medley relay, cannot be recorded as an individual result.  We do recognize splits as results for the boys at 400 and up since the flat start versus relay start are pretty negligible.  In addition, with everyone in 3 events in a shorter period of time with minimal rest breaks, it is hard to produce personal bests beyond everyone's first relay.  That being said, we had 7 personal bests on the day (technically 8 since Evan Clary got one in the 800 twice by dropping 22 seconds in the DMR 800 and then over 2 more in the 4x800).  Eli Holloway also had a nice PR in the 800 with a 5.5 second drop off his best, anchoring the sprint medley relay team.  Aveon Wynn got the lone NEPR on the day with his 1200 leg of the DMR, a seldom run distance.  And, although we do not have an elite performance number for this event, Langdon Sexton began his impressive day by dropping about 32 seconds from his 1200 leg in last year's DMR, clocking the first sub-3:40 in STC MS history.  His 3:33 was a great leadoff to a DMR team that shattered the middle school record (as was the goal going into the meet).  Tapiwa Mutoti gave the DMR team a 1:00 in the 400, while Alexander Koussoglou ran another sub-2:20 elite performance 800, just off his PR.  Charlie Branch anchored, as he did last year, and cruised to a comfortable sub-5:00 1600 (that is fun to say!).  This team destroyed the old middle school record by 20 seconds and the meet record by 34 seconds, winning by about 1:10. The other meet record came in the final event of the day, the 4x400 relay.  Thanks to a leadoff PR by Charlie and a 2-second, new elite performance, 20th all-time STC MS anchor leg from Langdon, this squad (along with Eli Holloway and Corbett Kessel) dropped a few seconds off the meet record.  We had a close call to a meet record in the 4x800, just .47 seconds away from the meet record.  Charlie led off with an elite performance and Langdon anchored in a blistering 2:14.20, dropping another second off his best and moving him up to 7th on the STC MS all-time list.  The other close call relay was the 4x100 team (Jayden Addei, Corbett, Alexander, Tapiwa) who ran an elite performance, good enough for 23rd on the STC MS all-time list.  This team was about 1.3 seconds off the meet record.  Nearly this same team (Palmer Telfian in for Corbett), ran an elite performance in the 4x200, good enough for 9th on the STC MS all-time list in that event.

 

We won 5 of the 7 events in the meet, with a runner-up finish in the sprint medley relay and a third place in the super sprint medley relay.  We also picked up 6th place points from our B team in the 4x800 and 7th place points from our B team in the DMR.  Along with winning the DMR by 1:10, we won the 4x800 relay by 1:12 and the 4x400 relay by 25 seconds.  We scored 69 points to the 44 of Franklin Military Academy in the runner-up slot.  As mentioned earlier, we have never lost this meet since we began it in 2017.  We beat all teams in attendance, moving to 34-3 on the season.