On Saturday, May 14th, Melayna participated in the middle school conference meet that was being held at Plymouth High School. Earlier in the week, thunderstorms were in the forecast, but by the time that we woke up early Saturday morning, those storms had moved out of the forecast and it was a blazing hot 89 degrees and not too many clouds in the sky. Noel dropped her off to catch the bus with her teammates and gave her instructions on drinking plenty of water and trying to stay in the shade as much as possible in between her events. She would have a long full day with five races possible.
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Nolan, Noel and I arrived at the high school around 9:45 and the preliminary races were to begin at 10:00. They would hold the 100 meter dash, then the 100 hurdles, and then the 200 dash preliminaries taking the top eight on to the finals which would begin the meet officially at 11:15.
Heading into the meet, Melayna's 100 hurdle time seeded her in 2nd place behind a really quick girl from Lincoln Middle School but anything can happen, especially in the hurdle events, so she needed to advance into the finals in order to see how it would all go. Thankfully, she easily won her preliminary heat with a clean uneventful run and she did advance into the final race. While she was practicing with the other runners, the girl that came into the meet with fastest seed time was considerably slower and she mentioned that she had injured herself the week before and was in a lot of pain. She wasn't sure if she would feel good enough to run her best. Even though it helped Melayna's chances of winning, we were honestly disappointed to know that the fastest girl wouldn't be competing at her best because it would have made for a great competitive race. That's how it goes sometimes though and hopefully Laynie would step up and take advantage of the situation.
After all of the preliminary races were finished, Melayna would head back to the start line to run the 100 hurdle final. She went into that race with the fastest seed time and would be running in lane 4. I was so nervous for her before the start of that race that my hands were shaking almost too much to even hold the phone steady so my apologies for the quality of the video. (I was also shooting in bright sunlight so I couldn't even see my phone screen as to know if I was actually filming it correctly. Thankfully the 100 race worked out in my favor. LOL)
Congratulations to Melayna! The Conference Champion in the 100 hurdles with a new PR of 17:83. This one was NOT hand held so it will become an official time and official PR. (It also qualifies for the standard at the middle school state meet in Terre Haute this upcoming Saturday, should she choose to run).
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After a short break, Melayna would be back to run the 2nd leg of the 4x100 meter dash. She ran a new PR split time of just over 13 seconds, which she was thrilled about but the team fell just short of the win and finished with a close 2nd place. With their time, they also met the time standard for the state meet.
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Next up was the 200 meter hurdles. They do not run a preliminary race of this event since it's longer, so they would run two heats. She was in the fastest heat and ended up placing 3rd in the heat and eventually placing 3rd overall in the conference. She was happy with her placing, but not as happy with her time of 36.0 seconds as she's run two seconds faster in the past and was hoping for another win. I also fell short of my goal in this race as I thought that I was filming it, but since I couldn't see the screen in the bright sunlight, I was only taking pictures and not video. Oops.
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And for the final event of the day, Melayna would once again lead off the 4x400. As they were announcing the first call for that race, I was underneath the bleachers with Nolan as we were trying to get out of the hot sun for a few minutes. She saw me and started crying saying that she was hot and tired and didn't want to run that race at all. I told her that she only had one race to go and that she could do it. She was still trying to get herself together when her three teammates found her and handed her the baton. They left to go check in but I wondered if it would affect her run at all. 'Turns out that she ran a few seconds slower than her best run with a 1:10, but everyone seemed exhausted from the heat and sun at that point and I think that all of the teams ran slower than their best. Melayna is in the black uniform running on the inside lanes and you can see her run to the front at about the 100 meter mark and she kept them out front until the hand-off and her teammates hung on to the lead finishing with a championship win and another state meet time qualification.
All in all, it was a very hot day but Melayna had a great meet finishing out the day with 2 first place finishes, a second place, and a third place finish. Her team finished 2nd in the conference. We are so happy for her and her hard work this season.
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Because the older girls had prom later in the night and they weren't sure what time we would be back, they decided to play it safe and stay home, but they asked that I send them videos of her races and keep them updated. They were so happy for her and Morgan was so sweet and made a sign that Melayna saw as soon as we drove into the garage.
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EDITED TO ADD: As of the time that I was originally typing this post, Melayna was trying to decide whether or not to attend and compete at the "state meet". (I put "state meet" in quotation marks because it isn't sponsored by the state as a high school IHSAA meet would be... it's more like a club meet and teams only go if their coaches turn in their times and choose to participate. In fact, some schools will be running their conference meets at the same time so it's not necessarily a fair representation of state qualifiers). But in any case, she had made the state cut in three events and had received an invitation based on her times that she needed to respond to fairly quickly. She was feeling like she didn't really want to go, but she was receiving a lot of pressure from her relay teammates who were afraid that they couldn't go if she did not. After a long discussion with us, a few tears, and a bit of time, she made the decision not to go, and Noel and I can easily support her in that decision, however it was difficult for her to go to school thinking that she was the one who would keep others from being able to run since she was an integral part of two relays. As it turns out, two alternates and one other girl from the main relay also could not go due to busy schedules, so she was not the only one. They are still feeling proud that they were invited.
