Track Sectionals 2025

 The ladies' 2025 track sectional was hosted at WCHS this past Tuesday night, and as you can see from the pictures, it was another cold and dreary night for running.  (And spectating!)  Since the forecast was calling for the heaviest rain right at the start of the meet, Nolan decided to stay at home in the warm and dry house.  The two older girls and I still headed over to the track, but we made sure to bring towels to sit on and extra blankets to stay warm under.  Amazingly, God answered our prayers to hold off the heaviest of the rain and wind and so things did calm down right before the running prelims were to start.  We are all definitely thankful for that!  Also, because it was a home meet and there is a locker room right behind the bleachers, our runners were able to stay warm and dry inside until they needed to come out and warm up for their events.

The weather apparently kept a lot of the spectators at home.  We had plenty of seating to choose from.

Noel was prepared - he wore his full suit of rain gear!  LOL

Melayna would not be running in the 100 hurdles for this meet because Noel wanted her to focus all of her energies on the 300 lows where she had a better chance to advance to regionals and that would also give one of our senior runners another opportunity to compete. 

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The night would kick off with the preliminary events:  the 100 dash, the 100 hurdles, and the 200 dash, and then they would take a 30 minute break to give the sprinters time to rest and regroup.  Both of our 100 hurdlers would advance out to the finals which would run about 30 minutes later and then our very own Annie would go on to not only win the 100 Sectional Finals, but she will head into the Regionals as a #2 seed next Tuesday night.  Great job Annie!!

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Later on in the night, Melayna and Annie would both come out for the 300 low hurdle finals.  Laynie would be all the way down in the lane #2 and Annie would be in lane #4.  The top three runners in the event would advance to regionals next week.  We all nervously watched and waited to see how this would all go down....

As I said, Melayna is all the way down on the inside lane #2.  You can hardly see her when the gun goes off but then she will come into view down the backstretch.  (I apologize for how loud we get by the end of the video.)  As she was running down the final stretch, she seemed to slow down just a bit and we thought she was going to get passed right at the end.  She said that she just had a quick mental lapse because she realized that she was second place and started getting excited... then she quickly remembered that she better keep going all the way through to the finish.  (And she also said she heard the sound of breathing quickly approaching behind her which spurred her to speed up again).  LOL

Congratulations to Annie for winning another Sectional final and also a huge CONGRATULATIONS to  MELAYNA for placing 2nd in the 300's and advancing to Regionals next Tuesday (48.58 final time).  Annie will head into regionals as the #2 seed and Melayna will be seeded #10.  

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I LOVE that Laynie's friend Victoria was able to come over to watch Laynie run.  She came in with her brother and they were both jumping up and down and cheering hard all the way through to the finish.  (She would later send Melayna a copy of the video she took and we were all laughing at her commentary as the race went on.  Too bad I couldn't post it here for future laughs).  

We really couldn't ask for a better friend than our sweet Victoria.

The girls and I would stay through the cold and drizzle until the entire meet was over -- and the Lady Tigers easily secured another Sectional Title, but within minutes of the last race finishing, you could see the clouds moving in and as we were driving home, the skies opened up and it just started pouring.  Noel said that they started pictures outdoors but then everyone had to come inside to the locker room area to finish pictures and to change out of their wet gear.

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Here is Noel's hurdle crew for the 2025 Sectionals.  

Annie will go on to run at Regionals next week (and hopefully State) and then she will hurdle for Taylor University in the fall and Rihanna is finished with her high school career but will run for Indiana Tech next year.  Good luck to both of them.  They are both beautiful girls and I know that Noel has really enjoyed coaching them these past four years.

Regional Qualifiers for next week!!!

LET'S GO!!