Sectionals!

The four runners and the alternate.

The girls had a GREAT time, which is really the point, after all!  They came into sectionals ranked 14th out of 16, so there was no pressure.  They knew they weren't going to State, so they could just go, have fun and enjoy the experience of getting to Sectionals.

Waiting for the hand-off.  She ran the 3rd leg.

They ran their race with everything they had and ran just shy of their team best time.  RoseBud felt like she has really figured out her strategy for running a 400 now and tested it last night.  It won't help her anymore this season, of course, but she'll go into next season with more confidence that she CAN go out harder at the beginning of the race and still have energy left for the finish.  She ran a 1:06+ and was pleased with that time.  They actually finished 12th, better than expected!

Rehashing the race and finding out their splits.

They were laughing and smiling after their race and they all said how much fun it was.  One of the senior girls on the team had ordered t-shirts for them all with their sectional, the date, and all the girls' names with their events on the back, so they wore them to the meet.  And RoseBud wanted a t-shirt from the meet (cross country meets always have shirts available for sale and she has quite a few, but only really big invitationals for track sell shirts, so she didn't have any to this point.) so I bought her a shirt.

The weather was a little dicey--it was VERY windy until the storm blew through.  There was a 30-minute delay and then it cooled off beautifully and the wind died down in time for RoseBud's race.

And we're sending 3 other events to State!  Altogether a very nice night!