The Track Meet.

After Dan's colonoscopy on Friday (which was all clear, Hallelujah!) we picked the kids up from school, grabbed some sandwiches from Subway, and headed over to Bishop McGuinness (the area Catholic high school) for the conference track meet.

6 area Catholic schools were competing in the final track meet of the season to see who could claim the title of conference champion.  Our school has lost the last two years to the same school (and maybe even more than that but this is only our third year at the school so I'm not sure about previous years) and our coach really wanted a victory.

And to be honest, so did the entire track team.  The school that we keep losing to has over 600 students while ours has only slightly more than 200.  We practice twice a week for almost two months to prepare for our two track meets and the final conference championship.  This other school practices only twice the entire "season" (not even sure you should call that a season) and they only participate in the conference championship.

We got to the track and began to set up right as the storms rolled in.  Everyone huddled under tents trying to stay dry until the storms passed.  They finally passed and we got the meet underway.

I was helping to make sure all of our athletes got to their events on time and to make sure that all the runners were in the correct lanes.  It was tiring but at least I got to see the start of all the races and could cheer for Peter and Sarah (and the other kids too, of course).

Peter only got to run in one race - the 400 meter relay.  Sarah got to run in 4 races - the 400 meter relay, the 50 meter dash, the 100 meter dash and the 200 meter dash.

My kids raced their hearts out.  Actually, our whole team raced their hearts out.

Sarah was running against 3 girls that were a lot taller than her and 2 that were her size.  She came in third in her individual events and was so dejected.  I tried to tell her that she ran as hard as she could and still got points for our school and that I was proud of her.  But she really wanted to win and could not be made to feel better.  Her relay team did place 2nd however and that seemed to pep her up a bit.

Peter ran as fast as I have ever seen him run and helped his relay team get a first place.  He was  excited.

And then more rain came.  We were almost done with the 400 meter relay when it started pouring rain again.  We still had two more events left to complete and news around the track was that our team was only behind by 20 points (and that didn't include the points for the 400 meter relay - which we were doing really well on).  The kids were getting excited that there was a chance that we might actually win this year.

But as the rain started, they called all the coaches and athletic directors to the tent to make a determination on whether or not to call the event or to proceed.  Our coach, a fierce competitor, fought to keep going because it wasn't lightening and the rain would most likely pass.  The other coaches wanted to call it.

So, they called it and we all went home wet and nnoyed that we didn't get a chance to finish.

And the next morning our coach sent an email saying that after they figured in all the points from the relay, our team lost...

BY TWO POINTS!

Oh, it was heartbreaking. The coach was upset.  My kids were upset.

If only we had a chance to finish the whole meet, we might have won.  Or, we might have fallen even further behind.   Either way, at least we wouldn't feel like we got cheated.

I'm proud of my kids and I'm proud of the whole team.

And I'm glad track is over for the year because track meets are even more chaotic than swim meet - and that's saying a lot!.

And guess what starts in two short weeks?  That's right!  Swim season!