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This track season saw many records broken and athletes highly motivated to consistently pursue the highest rankings. It was a year rich in unexpected developments and strong emotions. The coach proudly shared the accomplishments of his students on a Facebook post :
With track & field only having 2 classifications in PA, our Avonworth/Northgate co-op program now competes at the highest class, 3A. A tall order to qualify for WPIAL Championships, as they only take the top 24 performances from the regular season in each event. Even tougher to medal (top-8 at WPIALS), and VERY difficult to qualify for states.
Our kids still brought the thunder to the biggest schools in western PA! The boys 4x100m relay were the first to storm the podium. Zion Ward, Rowan Carmichael, Savian Baptiste, and Tucker Jeremias came into the meet seeded 11th and proceeded to grab 6th place medals to break a 10 year-old program record!
Tucker came back after the relay in the long jump and, seeded 15th coming in, tied his season best leap to grab a 5th place medal!Later in the meet, Grace Ermlich (after popping a PR and second-fastest 400 in program history) Hope Stiteler (after running in the 800m finals), Grace Kuretich (after running in the 200 semis) and Julia Doherty (after running in the 100m semis and 300m hurdle finals) powered the girls 4x400m relay. They came into the meet seeded 21st and blazed all the way up to the podium, grabbing 8th place medals with the 7th-fastest time in program history!
Last event of the day was the boys 4x400m relay. Tyler Harold, Rowan Carmichael, Will Smith, and Savian Baptiste came in as the 12th seed, and would have to finish in the top 8 AND hit the SQS of 3:24.03 to punch their tickets to states. That would be almost 2 seconds faster than our program record, a massive improvement in this event. And because of their seed, they would not be able to battle in the same heat against the top 8 seeds.
No matter – they led their heat from the gun, with our final 3 legs running by themselves way out in front, placed 6th overall and ran 3:23.47, qualifying for the state championship! Only teams to beat them? Butler, Moon, Penn Trafford, Norwin and North Allegheny – schools that have a massive talent-pool advantage. A tremendous achievement for these boys!
Please congratulate all these kids if you see them – they were beaming with pride at their accomplishments!
See you next week in Ship!
