Shorewood Track and Field

It was a poorly officiated, weather challenged meet that looked like a roller derby for much of the night but they did stay on schedule and all of the races were raced.

Sarah got knocked down three hundred yards into the mile. She landed wrong on her thumb. It looked either dislocated or broken from where I was sitting. To her credit she got up and finished the race before going to the hospital. It was a really gutsy performance. In the boys mile Andrew got knocked down at the start but they let the race go anyway. In the girl's two mile Morgan had to hurdle over a girl who fell in front of her. In the boy's two mile Kevin looked like a pool ball as he got pushed and shoved all over the track. And in the 300 hurdles, Erica went sprawling at the finish. The hurdles were run in the heaviest rain of the night which made it interesting to say the least.

The girl's were unfortunately shut out and will not be sending anyone on to State. There were some great individual efforts up to and including Erica who missed out on qualifying in the 300 hurdles by .06. That's a lean at the tape in case you are wondering.

The boy's had a better night. Maybe they should run all of their meets in the rain.

The 4 X 800 team ( Matt, David, Andrew, Dennis, Jordin, Peter) won with an 8:11. That is the fastest time going into state and they made it look easy. 8:18 turned out to be the cut-off for the fast heat so they couldn't have gone any slower.

Dennis won the open 800. Dennis ran 1:56 and change. With 300 to go he had dropped to 5th and it was looking interesting, but he dug deep and out kicked the field. Including a fresh Mike McCarty who won the 800 at state last year.

Andrew finished fifth in the mile at 4:30.04 and had to wait all night to find out if he was a provisional qualifier or not. There are 16 automatic bids ( 4 from each section) and then one extra provisional if that runner posts a time that is faster than the eighth best of the safe sixteen. Confused? Andrew was the 7th best time overall so he should be in.

Kevin took 3rd in the two mile. He looked awesome. The race surged back and forth around him but he hung in and out kicked a couple guys in the last 200. He ran 9:50 something. He will have a shot to be top five at State. Not bad for a soccer player.

The team finished 8th overall in the meet and will send seven runners to the State meet. I'm sure that three individual qualifiers is also some sort of record for us.

Great running everyone!

**I know that most of these pictures are blurry, but honestly some of the guys were running way too fast for the lighting conditions and they were not real cooperative about stopping for pictures when they passed the stands. I will of course bring it up with Dom at the next meet. In the mean time it's better than the alternative, I think.

The next party is at State unless there is a banquet before then, but I haven't seen anything about that yet...