Lia turned out for her junior high school's track team the week before spring break back on April 4th. Luckily all of the good friends she made this past fall during cross country season decided to turn out for track, too. I kept on telling Lia that the band was getting back together again (which was always met with eye rolls) and that this was going to be such a fun season for her. Since our school district is like the last one in the state to have a junior high school instead of a middle school, Lia and all her running buddies will be required to compete with their future high school next year as 9th graders for all of the sports that they compete in. In addition, all five of these girls have decided to go to different high schools in the district, so this will sadly be last time that they all get to compete together on the same team. This really is a bummer since they all lost out on running together during their 7th grade year due to all sports being cancelled last school year because of Covid. Oh well. I guess that I just need to be grateful that they all found each other and became friends this fall and get to have one school year running together. But I digress...
So after practicing four days a week after school for three weeks, Lia's team competed against Glacier View Junior High School today in their first track meet. Just like her first cross country meet in the fall, Lia was super nervous. In addition, her hip and her good ankle both started bothering her this week. At first, I panicked as her bad ankle took two years to get better, but luckily neither one bothered her during her meet today. Afterwards, Lia admitted that her nerves might have gotten the best of her and caused these two body parts to ache. I hope she is right as I don't think that either one of us can handle a new, chronic injury that plagues her for months and years to come.
Unlike Lia's unbelievably small and short cross country meets, Emmett and I showed up to a track field today full of hundreds of students competing in this meet. Although Lia's cross country meets were done in less than 30 minutes, this track meet lasted from 3 p.m. to 6:30 p.m. Track meets are so long to watch as a parent--especially when you have a 3-year old in tow. In addition, I had to find someone to pick Logan and Ella up from the bus stop and take them to their ninja and gymnastics class which will be a problem every Thursday for the rest of the track season. Emmett and I arrived at 3:30 (when the running events started) and I was able to get him to stand at the fence at the edge of the track and watch the first four events before Lia ran the mile. After the mile, I took him back to the car for about an hour to eat snacks, read books, and play with toys before heading back to the track to watch Lia run in the 4x4 relay which is the LAST event of the track meet. Surprisingly, Emmett did pretty well until the very end which gives me hope that we can do this over and over again for the rest of Lia's track season.
Lia was able to overcome her nerves and did a great job in both of her events. She came in 4th place in the mile and PR'd with a time of 7:02. She was so close to breaking into the 6 minute mile that I am totally confident that she will accomplish that by the end of the season. In addition, she was placed on the Varsity team for the 4x4 relay with two of her good friends, Erika and Abby, who are the best long-distance, female runners in the school. Due to the track meet running so late, the coaches in charge decided to do something I have never seen before and had the boys and girls relay teams all run the 4x4 together. Lia's team not only won for the girls relay, but beat a few of the JV boys teams that were racing at the same time which was really cool to see! Overall, Lia was so happy with her first performance and had such a positive experience. In addition, it was just so fun to watch her flitting around the field with her various running buddies smiling, laughing, talking, and cheering on her teammates. I am so grateful that she had the courage to try out for cross country this fall when she knew absolutely no one on the first day of practice. That experience gave her the courage to try out for track and has also been such an answer to prayers for so many different reasons as it has provided Lia with wonderful friends, a sense of belonging to her school, a new sport to enjoy and work on, and an overall confidence that she would have never started to develop otherwise.
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