One Hot Evening

Since I went straight from State Q's to a hotel and then on to a 24-hour orienteering event, I had not made time to write about the meet.  So, here goes a belated story...

With the temperature above 90 (and "real feel" close to the 96 degree "no go", per NYSPHSAA, and a chance of thunderstorms, there were a couple of ways the meet could be delayed or postponed, but the thermometer stopped rising and the clouds mostly stayed away, so we were on.

The first thing that I noticed upon arrival, was that the steeplechase barriers looked a little high.  After a rough measurement, they appeared to be 33", which is not the correct height for girls (30") or boys (36").  After the coaches meeting, we got that straightened out.

After an arbitrary delay for the sportsmanship awards, etc., the Pentathlon hurdles went off, with the runners in the wrong lanes, which screwed up the scoring for a bit.  Meanwhile, unbeknownst to me, Sarah was missing the start of the high jump, because the meet program handed out to the coaches said that the open high jump was after the girls pent high jump.  Oops.  She recovered to clear 5', but missed a chance to go to the State Meet, based on misses.

The first track event for our girls was the Steeplechase, with hopes of running good times despite the heat.  Val had Hannah Cole behind her for a couple of laps, but as Hannah dropped back, it was clear that the heat would prevent a fast time for Val, who relaxed to enjoy the win.  Meanwhile Julia kept moving up in the pack and did wind up posting a PR, finishing just over 8 minutes.

The next distance event for us was the 3000m.  Although Natalie wasn't prepared for one more week of racing, Amanda certainly was.  After Kennedy Jensen went chasing after Katie Lembo, with Eileen O'Hara following behind, it left Amanda in a small pack with "little Amanda", and girls from Penfield and HF-L.  After a fair amount of shuffling for the first 5.5 laps, Amanda took command and gradually ran away from the others.

Conor was the next WDR entrant, in the 800.  His goal was to break 2 minutes and he came very close (2:00.13), with a strong effort offset by a small error (cutting in too quickly and sharply after the break) that could have been worse if a Fairport runner hadn't allowed him to take the inside passing route on the backstretch during the second lap.

The girls 4x800 relay saw 3 PRs, but it was not quite enough to beat Chuchville-Chili, but we did beat Hilton.

The girls 4x400 relay was next, and Emma got the team off to a great start.  Alex, showing great resilience after her unfortunate Triple Jump result, broke 62 to keep us in second.  Colleen's best time was overshadowed by the incredibly strong third legs by Fairport, Mercy and especially Rush-Henrietta, so we had to settle for 4th.

The final distance event was the Pent 1500 with Nick running fine, but Adam lighting things up with an awesome finish to win in 4:40.