Sunday brought the last Track and Field meet of the season. The forecast looked good early, but not so much late in the day; would we be able to sneak it in?
For starters, these meets always run behind schedule. I’m sure it’s no easy feat to get 100s of JV kids lined up for all the events the first half of the day; I’ll give them that. Starting late though? Why? Anyways, for the 3rd meet, knowing this, we were in no hurry to get there. For a meet start time of 230pm, we typically will get there 30 minutes prior; this time… almost right on the button, and we were fine. The varsity meet didn’t start until after 3pm.
I’ve become quite the timer for these meets; I like it. It’s better than sitting down in the stands for hours and hours. At least I’m in the mix, standing up, doing something… Funny, I love doing nothing at home, but when it comes to my son’s sports, well, I’m always doing something. Again, I don’t mind it; I guess the school is lucky too, because I haven’t seen one other person (besides a coach) do any timing for the varsity. I’m sure everybody does their part at some point, somewhere, for something; that’s how it should work at least. Not worried about it.
OK, to the meet we go. My son’s first event was the 4×400 relay; this time, he would take the baton first. I think that was a good strategy; he should be either first or last IMO. As he came around the track ready to hand over the baton, his team was in first place; nice leg boy! After the dust settled, the team came in 3rd place overall; we’ll take it. Then came all the 100M heats; I think I timed like 15 of them for the girls. 15×6, like 90 girls running; crazy. None of our girls qualified. The number of boys heats, that is taking place simultaneously on the other side of the track, was a lot less. After the first meet, my son decided to NOT run in this event. Instead, he substituted the 1600M, which is about a mile, 4x around the track; that was his next event.
As the boys lined up for the 1600, the rain drops started; we were a little more than halfway through the meet. Could we get to the finish line? The boys were able to complete this one, running in the rain. My son came in 4th place, while his teammate/classmate came in 2nd; very good race for the school. Looking ahead to next year, when he and his teammate will be in 8th grade, we could be looking at 1-2 finishers; that would be cool. For now, 2nd and 4th will have to do; the rain continued. After that, we got the 100m girls finals in, but as the boys lined up for their final, we were given the instruction to evacuate the track; lightning had been spotted in the area. About 20 minutes later, we were told the meet would be cancelled; the remainder would be made up 2 weeks from now. I guess the track season isn’t over quite yet…
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