Phillip's First Track Meet

Friday afternoon, Hosanna ran in the Chieftain Twi-night Invitation at Rogue River High School. It was Phillip's first track meet and a beautiful day for it. It was a crazy meet with fourteen teams in all, half of whom were 4A schools. The meet took an agonizing six and a half hours to complete. "This is the meet that never ends, it just goes on and on, my friends . . . "

If you look at the first photo, you'll see Jordan at the far right, in front at the start of the 1500 meter race. If you click on the picture to enlarge it, you may see Phillip directly behind him about two strides.

Since it was Phillip's first race ever, Hosanna's coach was simply hoping that he'd be able to finish in under seven minutes. The second photo shows Phillip hot on the heels of his friend, Nicholas Chard, who was also running his very first race, as they finished the first lap. We were all pretty stunned at their pace and figured they would fade fast, but they didn't.

Jordan ran a strong race and for the first time broke the five minute mark. His PR last year was 5 minutes 14.5 seconds at the 2006 district meet to end the season. He finished in 3rd place in his heat and 12th place overall on Friday in 4:54.61.

Phillip and Nicholas never did crash and burn. They kept a good solid pace and finished well. I told Phillip on Thursday that I was confident that he would set a personal record. It only took him a few seconds to get the joke . . . and he now has a PR of 6:19. We were all thrilled to see him give such a good effort in his very first race.

Phillip only ran one event on Friday but Jordan came back a couple of hours later to run the 3000 meters. He was a little concerned since his PR was among the slower times in the field. He got boxed in a little bit early on and even was tripped a couple of times. He recovered, though, and ran in 8th place much of the race. Jordan finished up with a new PR, cutting 20 seconds off his previous best to finish in tenth place in 10:45.6. We had hoped he would get down to about ten and a half minutes but, still, if he can clip 20 seconds a race, pretty soon he'll be going backwards in time.

The day ended with Jordan running the third leg of the 4x400 relay. That's not a particularly strong event for him but he gave it a good effort and he ran the 400 meters about five seconds faster than his normal time in practice.