Today is always a fun meet with the relay-only approach really making us feel more like a team.  I realize a Monday meet can sometimes be tough and I was worried we would have a variety of illness/injury from the weekend, and that turned out to be very true.  We ended up with 8 absences, 3 from Sunday, 1 from Monday morning, and 1 from Monday afternoon.  These 5 new absences after the first round of entries made a cascade of changes, so you all certainly tested my lineup adjustment skills this meet!  We made it work, despite some odd situations like Hudson leading off a 4x100 relay team after running the 1600 leg of the DMR.  We had several guys, who were not feeling 100%, push through the 4x400 at the end, knowing we didn't have any subs left.  That third event of the (long) day really tests you, and all those endurance runs and weightlifting sessions certainly paid off on those final events of the day for each athlete.  This was not the only factor that made PRs hard to come by today.  The fact that we can't use any 100 or 200 splits to count as PRs, since the running start would be an unfair advantage over a guy who has a "still" start like in an individual 100/200, really hurts our options for PRs since 4 of the 7 relays have 100s and/or 200s in them.  That being said, we still had 10 individual PRs and near PRs in the distances between 400 and 1600.

 

We got started right out of the gates with a great first relay, the Super Sprint Relay.  Our B team looked good and had a near-PR (about a half-second off) for Evan in the 400 leg.  The A team blew everyone out of the water, winning by over 8 seconds and breaking the STC MS and meet record by over 3 seconds.  Elex had an elite performance in his 400 split with a (comfortable) 54.2, a time that no STC middle schooler has run but him.  This now gives him the top six 400 times in STC MS history.  The DMR had 2 scoring teams, finishing 3rd and 6th.  Along with the three NEPRs from LB, Miko, and Ford in the 1200 leg, we had 3 other PRs as Freddy almost beat his sub-2:30 goal in the 800 (.26 seconds away!), Lachlan almost broke 2:50 for the first time, and Carson dropped almost 10 seconds off his 1600 PR, now down to 5:35.  The sprint medley was strong for us with both 400 and 800 runners earning PRs in both A & B relays.  Plus, our 200 runners at the beginning of this relay had a great "400" split before the 2nd runner handed off the baton to the 3rd runner.  Jelus almost broke 1:00 in the 400 of the A team while LB somehow found some energy after his 1200 in the DMR (right before this event) to get an 800 PR.  Bryce and Evan each dropped close to 2 seconds in their 400 (Bryce) and 800 (Evan) as Evan broke 2:50 for the first time.  The A team was just under 5 seconds from an elite performance in this event.

 

In the 4x100 relay, we went into the meet with this being the only relay meet record we did not have.  That was erased by a huge margin as the SSMR quartet of Lucas, Jahmari, James P, and Elex not only beat the meet record by over 3 seconds, they also beat our blistering school record of 46.15 last week.  Our B team also looked strong, picking up the final scoring slot in 8th place.  The 4x800 had a lot of traffic early on, but the A team used a leadoff PR from Carson, a near PR from Freddy, and solid runs from Jelus and Aidan to pull out the win, just about 11 seconds from the meet record.  The B team had a near-PR time from Lachlan and each runner ran consistently under 3:00 to give this team a 7th place finish (scoring position).  Our speedy quartet of Lucas, Jahmari, James P, and Elex joined forces one more time in the 4x200 relay and once again earned a STC MS school record and meet record, crushing the old time by about 3.5 seconds.  They broke 1:40 (and 1:39 for that matter), averaging about 24.75 per runner in the 200.  This event also had our strongest B team of the day, finishing in 4th and not too far off (under 4 seconds) the elite performance time of 1:52.  The final event was the 4x400 relay, as it always is in every meet, and this one was a bit more challenging for us.  It was the only event, boys or girls, a team went 1-2 in an event.  Albert Hill took the top two spots while our A team was 3rd, just over 2 seconds from an elite performance. Most everyone was close to their PRs, especially Palmer and Carson in the B team.  The C team even saw PRs from Hudson and Ford in the 400.  Albert Hill did beat our meet record by about 9 seconds, running 4:02, so we will try to get that one back next year!

 

In the scoring department, we pulled out our 8th straight win in 8 chances of this meet being held, despite missing a good chunk of runners.  We had 75 points, Albert Hill had 52, and Franklin Military had 37.  This pushed our season record to 43-1, which would be even stronger if we scored the distance meet last weekend.

 

What a special group of relays we have had this season, especially the 4x100 and 4x400.  We got to see that special speed of this year's squad in other events today like the Super Sprint Medley and the 4x200.  It certainly helps when you have one of the best runners in the state/nation on your relay team, but the three other guys that have been in our various record-setting relays with Elex (Lucas, James P, Jahmari, Tapiwa, Aidan), are showing that they too are impressive runners and our relays look to be the favorites to win the 4x1 and 4x4 at states, and quite possibly pull out the 4x8 win to go with it.  Running with such a strong runner on your team makes other runners want to push harder and that becomes infectious (in a good way) and leads to some really fast relays!  They are feeding off each other and meshing well at the right time with smooth handoffs and seemingly time drops and records every time we run.  We certainly have some great momentum heading into states in a few weeks and our squad could certainly vie for the middle school state title with our relay/400 depth.