Last weekend, Nina competed in the Regional track meet for her high school. The meet was rescheduled twice due to weather, but thankfully, the day of the meet was cool but sunny. Leading up to the meet, we had over a week of freezing cold temps, snow, and freezing rain. Since the meet was going to be held outdoors (but had to happen within a certain window of time), the twice rescheduling ended up being the best option for the athletes in the long run.
Regionals was held at a school in Richmond, so we drove down that morning, and once we started to get close, Nina was all nervous jitters. This was obviously her first time attending Regionals, and she really wanted to do well for her team. She qualified in four events, but she didn’t have high expectations for two of them.
One of the events that was super new to her was long jump. She only long jumped in the last half of the track season, but it seems to be a good event to add to her repertoire, so we were happy to see her learning something new.
Also new this year were the relays. She’s run a 200m dash in competition before, but she had not run a 200m or 400m relay. Her 200m relay team was pretty strong, so they were hopeful to qualify for states (which they did). Nina has run the lead leg in this event during the regular meets, so she ran the lead leg again at Regionals.
It was a pretty frantic pace at the beginning of the meet for her. As soon as the meet started, she had to long jump, then she went straight to her hurdles race, then over to the high jump pit to start preparing for jumps when they called the 200m relay team to check in.
While the lower entry height female high jumpers started jumping, she was running her 200m, but thankfully the high jump officials paused the jumps so she was able to change her spikes and get over to the high jump pit in time to start at her entry height. She ended up winning the high jump competition which was really cool for her since she hadn’t jumped competitively since March 2020 and has had very little high jump practice since it’s an event that has been very limited because of Covid restrictions. The same was probably true of the other girls as well as Nina didn’t have to jump her highest to win the regional competition, but I’m guessing it’s going to be a different story at states.
She ran the 400m relay at the last event of the meet and was quite exhausted afterwards. Her 200m relay team qualified for states, and Nina qualified for states in high jump. Several of her teammates also qualified for states, and their team took an overall 2nd place finish at Regionals. Being a part of the high school “indoor” track team and getting the opportunity to compete at Regionals ended up being such a great experience for her. States is on Tuesday, 3/2, at Liberty University in Lynchburg.
Next year, Independence High School moves up at least 1 or 2 classes in relationship to competition with other schools, so the competition is going to keep getting bigger, but as a freshman, we couldn’t have been happier for her experience this year. It has given her a connection to her high school, enabled her to make new friends, and has, by far, been her highlight since Covid restrictions hit.
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