Frosh/Soph Championships

February is here and the state championships series begins next weekend. Having spent the weekend watching the "big kids" race Friday at the Monmouth County Championships and the "young kids" race Sunday at the Frosh/Soph Championships, I have to say the veterans better start looking over their shoulders.
While some fine performances were turned in by both groups, I was very impressed with some of our newest runners. Forget about times, I saw more girls step on the track and just simply race this Sunday then I have almost the whole rest of the season. I do believe I even saw one kid throwing up after his race. Those efforts were rewarded as many medals were won and many PB's were achieved. Congratulations to all the boys and girls who competed Sunday!
One of the things Coach Bell and I noticed Friday night was the fact that kids who claimed they had tried as hard as they could were goofing around laughing and joking only 5 or 10 minutes after their race. Sunday, you could tell, the freshman boys and girls 4x400 teams were still exhausted when they got picked up from the school a half-hour or forty five minutes later. When you finish a race like the 400, or any of the distance races, you should be hurting and it should take a while to recover. If it doesn't, you haven't put enough into it. The other thing I noticed is that at least a few girls are running the same times as they were 2 or 3 years ago. As I said to one girl at the meet on Friday, one thing worse then losing races all the time is running the same time again and again and never getting better. There is only one explanation for that, and that is inconsistent effort at practice. If you are at practice everyday and putting in the time and the work you can't help but get better.
So I'm putting the challenge out there - will the juniors and seniors find it in themselves to push the limits at practice, start RACING again, and start living up to their potential or will the freshman and sophomores run past the veterans and forge a new future for the team? Who will lead the team in the spring?! Who wants it more??!!