Districts

                Thursday is the day of districts or the state qualifying meet for track and field. If you want to run at state Thursday is your only chance to qualify. A week after that on Thursday, Friday and Saturday is when the state meet takes place.

                One way to guarantee your qualification to state is by placing first or second in your event at the districts meet. In every district the first two places go to state and after that they take the next twelve fastest runners. So even if you place third at districts or eve n sometimes fifth or sixth you can still qualify for state if your time is fast enough and you were just in a very fast district for that event.

                This year in my district we are competing against Clinton, Washington, Dubuque, Prairie, Iowa City High and Iowa City West. This year districts is looking very competitive in all of the field events. Many of the top twenty ranked athletes who do field events are in our district and based on the standings as of now form the year ten people could make it to state in discus.

                Last year we had people qualify in most events except for a few but this year we have lost a lot of athletes that qualified last year so it will be much more difficult for our team to have someone qualify in most of the events but it is still very possible. One thing that my team really needs to work on in order to qualify would be improving our handoffs. Lately a lot of our handoffs in relays have been costing us few seconds and if my team is able to perfect them by the state qualifying meet and they are able to drop a few seconds they can greatly improve their chance of qualifying for state especially in the four by one and the four by two hundred meter relays.

                The state qualifying meet is on Thursday and my team still needs to work on a few things to qualify like handoffs. Having only one chance to qualify can be very stressful and pressuring. If you mess up your handoff or our even just having an off day you could jeopardize your chance of going to state. Last year we had a teammate who was ranked high in long jump and had a very good chance of qualifying but she ended up scratching on all of her jumps and didn’t make it. Hopefully everyone on my team is able to perform their best this year at districts and we have many of our events qualify. (440)