7th Place....Big Deal!

Track season is at last in full swing. After a few scattered (and COLD) meets, and of course the sprint to get

Drake Relay qualifying times, teams are full on running a couple times a week.

**Congratulations to the Oriole 4x100 team of Mattea Otten, Sydney Vaugh, Sarah Thies and Brittany Clark for being Drake Qualifiers for the second year in a row. Way to go ladies!! ** Last night the Orioles traveled to Tipton for the annual Tigerette Relays and armed with hearts, brains, courage, and a whole lotta fortitude and speed, came away with 7th place. "Uh...7th place", you might say ..."So what"? That's no big deal.... Lions and tigers and bears Oh My.... (okay, I don't know if there were bears, but there were lions and tigers) you would be mistaken!The Tigerette Relays are a BIG meet. generally 18-20 teams, and only a handful of those teams are 1A. Usually they run prelims and finals, JV and Varsity. You stay all night. (okay, not really all night, but very late) You run , so to speak, with the big dogs. In 2007 the Orioles placed 15th. In 08 the meet was, shockingly, rained out. This year, with a beautiful spring day, and 19 teams, the meet was scaled back a bit, in that no prelims were held, so the meet length was definitely cut, wrapping up shortly before 10:00 pm. As a side note... lots of people get cranky about meets that run into the darkness.....but I find it adds a little bit of drama and atmosphere, especially for the final two events of the night...I enjoy meets under the lights. What I do NOT enjoy, is a meet held at a track with no lights, which runs into the darkness, so we cannot even see the runners until they are directly in front of the stands. Each and every year we sit in the stands at Coe and watch ...um....shapes...run the 4x100 and 4 x 400. Here's a crazy thought...start that meet an hour earlier! But I digress....Back to Tipton. So why do I say that 7th place was a major accomplishment? Well...lets tick off a short list. We field a team of 13, (11 last night) and can only manage to field 10-13 entries out of 21 events...but to do that, several of our girls have to run the max, often one race right after another with no down time. Of the 19 teams there, only 1 had fewer girls, and most have 20-30 members on the roster. 4 teams were 1A, the rest were 2A & 3A . We practice on a neighboring track, or for all practical purposes no track. At least three of the girls were fighting off respiratory ailments. One has a dance injury. Gentry Stewart ran 1100 meters in four events including the 400 hurdles & acting as anchor for the JV 4x4, all in the last half of the meet. Sydney Vaughn ran in 3 relays almost back to back last night. 3 of those were the final two events of the night. Four girls ran on both those relays with no rest in between.  April Coppess was a running machine, and also ran in 3 relays back to back. (For those of you who think, so what, that's nothing, I suggest you head on down to the track and run a couple laps at full speed, one right after another, then get back to me!) Our JV teams held their own, though they'd never even run those relays together, and did a solid job, placing in a couple events. When it's time to put the spikes on and hit the track, or girls just get out there and do it, without (much) complaint....and the end result is a Brittany Clark gold in the open two, with her best time this season, 2nd place in two, & 3rd in two other events, with a smattering of other placings. So when they evening was over, despite the odds being stacked against them for anything but a bottom tier place, instead they were in the top half of the night.

7th place...and thats FIERCE, Orioles...FIERCE!