I hope everyone has dried out from this past Friday's meet.  Coach Dunn and I have competed in high school in meets like that in northeast OH and central PA, and although we have had some cold meets and some wet meets in our stint as STC track coaches, Friday might have been the worst combination of the two.  We were certainly spoiled at the first meet, so I guess we were due for this.  Nevertheless, there were some good lessons from competing at a meet in poor weather.  Everyone competes in the same weather, so if you just embrace it and don't let it mentally impede your goals, you are going to do better than making the weather excuse before you even compete.  We told the boys days leading into the meet to approach Friday as if the meet is going to happen instead of thinking the weather was going to cancel the meet.  The coaches embraced it as Coach Dunn stood out in the elements to run high jump, Coach Bey helped run shot put and, in addition to Coach Via, also wore shorts the whole meet!  I was running around moving hurdles and blocks much of the meet, but paused under the finish line tent to still get splits for the 1600, 800, and 4x4 athletes.  It was also nice to see Coach Cross out there for a bit and also Coach Hornik who was wrapped in a blanket by the end of the meet.  We are certainly lucky to have such a nice field house right next to the track, so the team was able to warm up, cool down, and stay dry in there most of the meet.  We would like boys out supporting teammates normally, but given the elements, hanging out in the field house most of the meet was fine for this situation.  Speaking of warming up and cooling down, this was a concern of the coaches.  Middle schoolers in general need to do a better job of this, and this is especially true in cold weather.  Many boys came to the line shaking because they were cold.  Clearly they did not "warm up" properly.  One other piece of this is that this was the type of weather that boys should be wearing long sleeves and pants to the start line, shedding that clothing right before the start of a race.  This is something to keep in mind should we come across cooler weather in any of our future meets.  That last thing I will say about the meet in regards to weather is that it clearly scared off some runners, especially the STC upper schoolers who ended up not running any 4x400 relays at the end of the meet.  All 3 middle school 4x400 teams were out there, with our A team even battling with Hampton Roads' (high school team).  The mental toughness and grit everyone showed, especially these relays running at 7:15pm in cold and low 50s, only makes us mentally stronger moving forward.

 

Despite the conditions, the middle school squad earned 26 personal bests, 12 elite performances, and 3 close calls to elite performances.  The shorter events were once again our main area for PRs with 16 of the 26 coming in the 100, 200, and 400.  We added 5 in the distance events (800, 1600) and 5 in the field (LJ and SP).  Elex and Lucas hit elite performances in the 100, Elex and Tapiwa hit an elite performance in the 200, with Tapiwa's PR moving him up to 20th on the STC MS all-time list.  We had 3 personal bests in the individual 400 with 4 more in the 4x400 splits.  Tapiwa almost won the individual 400 against high school runners and inched down his time to his already occupied 15th slot on the STC MS all-time list.  Eli Holloway was within a second of breaking the 1:00 barrier (elite performance) for the 2nd time in the last month.  James Pickren led off the 4x400 A relay team in his first-ever 400 and got even closer to breaking the 1:00 barrier.  Eddie had a huge PR over 3 seconds as he used a late surge from the heavily puddled lane 1 to chase down 2 high school runners in his heat.  In the 800, LB had a big PR of over 5.5 seconds.  Jahmari was in the mix with the high schoolers, about a second ahead of where he started last season in the 800.  In the 1600, we were looking to have a sub-6:00 party, but the weather made that a bit of a challenge.  Carson ran tough to hang onto a few high schoolers leading the heat and that led to a big 13-second drop and his first time under 6:00.  Our other 4 runners ran together for most of the race with Cameron just sliding in under 6:20 for the first time in his career.  Just a few seconds behind was Lachlan who had a huge 25-second PR to highlight an impressive 1600.  In the relays, our A 4x100 team of Jahmari, James P, Lucas, and Jelus snuck onto the elite performance list by .02 seconds with their 51.98.  This was impressive given that a STAB runner impeded Lucas right after the 2nd exchange, costing us a second or two off our finish time.  Hand-offs were pretty solid for both A and B teams, despite the weather.  The three 4x400 teams saw 4 PR splits, including the aforementioned James Pickren 1:00.32.

 

In the field events, it wasn't too rainy early on, allowing us to get in some strong marks.  The rain did pick up, canceling discus and making the high jump area very challenging.  We had 6 elite performances in the field events with 3 in the long jump from Elex, Jahmari, and Palmer.  Jahmari's best jump was his first time over 17-feet and put him into a tie for 11th on the STC MS all-time list.  Lucas was close to making it an elite sweep as he improved a foot to 15-6, just 6 inches from an elite performance in that event.  Arun added another in pole vault and we had 2 more in shot put, continuing our domination of that event.  Evan had an impressive PR over a foot, now just over a foot from an elite performance.  However, it was Aidan who got his first elite performance in shot, moving into 13th place on the STC MS all-time list.  Lawson Clelland passed his older brother for 4th on the STC MS all-time list with his first time over 30-feet.  He needs just 3.5 more inches to get onto the record board.  Current middle schoolers now sit 4th, 6th, 8th, 12th, 13th, 15th (not currently doing track), 21st, and 22nd on the STC MS all-time list.  That is more than a third of the all-time list (8 out of 23) and we may have a few more when all is said and done.

 

Although we were not worried about the score in a high school meet against high school competition, nor did we make a line-up to try and score points, we did beat one team and were only 3 points from beating another team.  When we get back to our middle school-only meets on 4/8 and 4/11, we will get back into scoring mode.