What a first day of states!
First, we had Andrew Gilbert in prelims of 110mH. Andrew came into the event seeded 15th (out of 18 qualifiers), and hasn't run a hurdle race in over 2 weeks because of an injury. It wasn't until yesterday that we made the decision to give states a go… and boy did Andrew deliver!! Running out of lane 1, he qualified through to the finals on Saturday by finishing 5th in his heat, securing one of the three time qualifiers. His time was 14.57, a 0.29 PR, and 7th fastest on the day! This time is also top 5 all time at BHS, and all marks faster were school records at the time they were run. He'll run out of lane 1 again on Saturday (maybe it's the lucky lane!), but first he has 300mH prelims tomorrow morning, where he is ranked 8th!
Our second race of the day was the girls 4×800m. Our team came into the race ranked 14th, but you wouldn't know it by how they ran! Kajsa Wik led off, went to the front group, and didn't look back. Sophie Roza came next, and picked up where Kajsa left off, going to the front of the entire race and staying there for her entire leg. Third was Sadie Stokes, who was tapped into the squad as our first alternate and stuck with that front pack — an incredibly brave run!! Sadie handed off to our anchor, Calia Vaughn, with first place in sight. Calia, our busiest athlete this weekend, went out hard to make up ground, took it to the front, and held on to end the race in SECOND PLACE!! Altogether, the ladies ran a 9:18.59, #4 in Colorado (all classifications) and #59 in the USA this season…. and breaking the BHS school record of 9:25.82 (2024) by over 7 seconds!!!
On deck for Day 2 tomorrow:
Great job to those who ran today, and good luck to those running tomorrow!
Go Panthers!!!
Coach T
