IHSAA Track Regionals // Kokomo Regionals

 Melayna was participating in the IHSAA track regionals at Kokomo last Tuesday night, May 21st.  

Noel was already traveling down with the team and Marissa had her scholarship night that same evening, so Morgan and I picked Nolan up from school and then after dropping him off at the house, we drove down to Kokomo to watch the Lady Tigers compete in the regionals.  Same as the week before, the top three runners in each event would advance to the State Finals on May 31st.

Thankfully the rain had moved through earlier in the day so it would be a dry meet, but it was really windy with gusts over 25 mph so the runners would be running right into a headwind, which definitely would not help with times.

It's always fun to see your name / child's name on the back of a Regional Qualifier t-shirt.

Our 4x800 relay team would kick off the events of the evening but unfortunately, they would finish 5th and would not advance.  Then we had one runner advance in the 100 meter dash and then Annie would run prelims in the 100 hurdles.  She made it to the final race later in the evening but then she would not place high enough to advance out to the state finals in that event. 

Melayna and Bailey would come up into the stands to cheer her on in her 100 hurdles.

Once the prelim events were over, the meet would begin with all final events and Melayna made her way down to the infield to begin warming up.  She and Annie would run the 300 hurdles at 8:30.  Before the race, it was neat to see Melayna and Annie praying together in the infield and then a few minutes later, another competitor from our conference came over and hugged both of our girls and then she prayed with them again.  I love the camaraderie and friendships that are developed through sports and Melayna has made some friends from other schools and although they fight fiercely during the race, they can hug and shake hands and just be friends before and after.

I took a video of the actual race but for some reason, I cannot download it here.  Annie fought hard and made it in by hundredths of a second and she will run at the State finals next weekend.  Unfortunately for Melayna, she just didn't have a good race right from the gun.  Her steps were off or something and she stutter stepped the first three hurdles, which definitely affected her time.  She ended up finishing just at 50 seconds (which she would have been thrilled with just three weeks ago), and her season would come to a tearful end.  'Definitely not the finish that she was hoping for, but she is only a sophomore so it was definitely a learning experience.  

All in all, she had a great season and the Lady Tigers were able to advance several individuals out to the state meet and finished as the Regional Champions for the first time since 2017 or so.

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On Thursday night, Noel would head up to Goshen High School for the IHSAA Boy's Track Regionals where both Blake and Eric would be running in the 110 high hurdles and the 300 lows.  

Blake would advance to the state finals and the boys would finish in 2nd place overall at the Regional Meet.

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Former Coach Rob Peters, Current Coach Noel Howett (from Warsaw), and current coach Luke Howett (coaching for a rival school).  

The head coach typed up a press release after the meet and although he wrote something about each regional runner, I wanted  to keep the parts that the coach wrote about Blake and Coach Howett and then also Eric.  'Such great stories about each guy.