Second Place! · 1 June 2024
Photo courtesy of Marc Hillestad
Last weekend, the Cedarcrest High School Girls Track and Field team won second in state! It was an amazing weekend of competition.
The state Track and Field (T&F) meet is a crazy weekend of competition. There are running events and field event going on for three days. Jumpers and throwers and runners from all over the state gather to see what individuals and what teams will be the best. It is a crazy three days. And even though people try and figure out the numbers beforehand, nobody really knows who will come out on top as a team until all the events are done. We took ten girls, and seven of them scored enough points to bring home the second place trophy. Way to go girls!
Now, if you think that T&F is an individual sport with a team component, you are right. To an extent. But there are some aspects of the sport where the individual athlete might need to put the team first. Or maybe a high second. One of those considerations is in the relays.
Relays are usually people’s secondary events. The athletes like them, but usually not as much as they like their individual events. Which sometimes means that they need a little convincing. After all, running events have two components at the state meet – preliminaries and finals. Which means two races of the same thing. And when you add the preliminaries of relays, that can be a lot of racing. So the athletes need to buy into the team concept. They need to know that the relays are important. Important enough to make sacrifices of time and energy. Both in practice and in meets. Our girls did just that.
We had two relay teams at the state meet, the 4×200 meters and the 4×400 meters. Both relays scored points. And when those relay points were added to the points of the individual scorers, we had 59 points (compared to the winning team’s 67 points). Going into the last race of the meet, the 4×400m relay, we were tied for second. So all the girls had to do was pass the baton around the track and finish the race and we would win second place outright. They finished eighth, and the girls team won a trophy! Second place! Woo hoo!
Now second place is nothing to sneeze at. I know a coach who has won it all before who was excited to get a second place trophy. And we had never done it before. So we were ecstatic. The 2024 Cedarcrest Girls T&F team had done what no other Cedarcrest girls T&F team had ever done before. They got a trophy at state.
To be sure, every girl on the team contributed to the effort. One of our athletes had the majority of our points finishing first in two events and adding a second and third place in her other two events. L was the long jump and triple jump champion. She added her other points in the 100 meter (third) and 200 meter (second) races. M added points finishing fourth in the triple jump. (We had two placers in the same event!) MJ got third in the discus. L2 got fifth in the 800 meters race. And our team of K, A, L2, and S finished fifth in the 4×200m and eighth in the 4×400m relays. It was an amazing team effort.
It was an amazing three days that culminated an amazing season. Few people would have put our girls in second place in the state in the 2A championship, but our team did it. Congratulations Cedarcrest High School Girls Track and Field team! You are amazing.
© 2024 Michael T. Miyoshi
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