State Meet Day 2

Day 2 of the state meet was every bit of the bear that I thought that it was going to be. With an additional classification brings additional meets which makes for a long day for both athlete and spectator. The goal again today though was to just qualify for the finals on Saturday. We only had one competitor today and that was Brenna Hoffman in both the 400m and 200m. She felt pretty good today, but was a little nervous for the prelims. I told her that she needed to have some confidence in her abilities, and to just run a smooth race throughout without tightening up. I also told her it was alright to open up her stride a little bit to make sure that she won her heat in the 400m. She ran a great prelim race, and without pushing too hard won her heat in 58.02. The 400m promises to be as exciting as the Mt. Hood Conference district meet. The 200m is always a little different. There was no holding back in this event, as she had to get out hard and finish at least second to automatically qualify. I don't like to play the time game, and wait to see if you are one of two qualifiers based who were not the top two in your heat. Brenna got out a little slow, but ran a good corner to make up some ground on her competitors. She finished 2nd with a time of 25.61 which is good enough to get her into finals. Brenna is going to have to run a great 200m on Saturday to finish in the top 4 especially with the likes of Mandy White, Kayla Smith, and Shavey Hill.

Even though today's meet was primarily prelims, the 800m finals were contested today. I've always felt that the 800m is one of the most fun and competitive races to watch at the state meet. I still like the idea of those athletes getting to compete on Saturday with all of the other finals. Having the 800m spread out in this format does allow for more rest time for those individuals competing in more than one distance event though. Saturday is the big day though. We will score the majority of our points on Saturday. Our pole vaulter Ashlee Neal is starting things off for us early and I really believe she has the capability to sneak in for a few points. Kayla Hendershot is also competing in the discus. She has a great shot at winning an individual state title. She is a big meet competitor and appears to be peaking at the right time. We look for some big time points from her. We also have Brenna in the 400m and 200m, and we look for her to score in both events. The last event of the day promises to be the most exciting for us with the girls 4x400m. If yesterday's prelims are any indicator of how things will be, the event is wide open with any number of teams capable of winning. The meet will sort out the truth.