First Meet of the Year

Alison had her first track meet today.  I'm not quite sure what I was expecting since I haven't been to a track meet since I did it back in 1983, but they have a huge team!  Ali didn't even know what events she was going to be doing until the day before.  She wanted to do the high jump, and long jump, but was told she wouldn't be "competing", and would rather be doing an exhibition.  I suppose that is the code for letting the not so good kids participate, but their results wouldn't be counted toward the final score of the competition. 

She ended up running the first leg of 800m relay, or as they call it, the 4 x 200.  I thought she did pretty well overall, but after the first 100 to 120 meters she sort of started to die.  I don't know if it was the fact that she has trouble breathing from asthma or she is just not in shape for running 200m.  Overall though, her team finished first in their heat for the girls.  That was the other thing that I found strange.  They ran the boys and girls together, and mixed 7th and 8th grade.  I suppose it makes sense since there are so many kids and it would take forever if they didn't.  I remember when I was her age running track, we combined the 7th and 8th grade into one team score, there was no 7th grade team or 8th grade team.  Also, boys and girls competed separately.  I'm not sure if that changed somewhere along the line, or is just because our teams were so much smaller competing for a Catholic school.

Also, the Falls' team was about twice the size of the school they were competing against (Slinger).  So they should have won by mere numbers alone.  And what was originally scheduled to last from 4:00 - 6:00 lasted until almost 7:00 in order to get everyone's events completed.  The Falls did end up winning, so that was good.  Next week they have two meets scheduled, one in West Bend, and one in Sussex.  Hopefully Ali will get to actually compete for points next week.  Her attitude is not so much that she wants to win, but at least get better.  So regardless of whether she gets to actually compete, or wins or not, we're proud of her for just going out to give it a try.