Most of the year, Jackson has been our sixth or seventh runner. This has been a promising sign of his potential future contributions to the team as he is only a freshman, and being the top freshman in the whole district. At the district meet, a several of his teammates were a bit off of their game. Jackson "came to the rescue" as he moved up through the pack with poise and heroic confidence. By the end of the race, he had moved up to our third position, posting a time of 17:34, a 14 second improvement. His effort, the only P.R. of the day for our Panther boys, was critical in helping the team secure their tickets to the State Meet in Pasco next week, the first time since 2010. Great job Jackson! We are super glad you are on this team.
Two weeks ago, Morgan's parents when to Hawaii, abandoning her here in the contiguous 48 states. That weekend, we raced at George Fox. Her Panther Pal gift that day was a Hawaiian theme with a card promoting the only thing better than being in Hawaii was running a 1 minute P.R. at the meet that day. With the sloppy course on a windy day, along with Morgan battling a nagging little injury, sadly there was no PR that day. So we took the next week off from racing, apparently a great move. This week, we found something even better than being in Hawaii AND running a 1 Minute P.R. at the GFU XC meet: RUNNING A FULL MINUTE P.R. AT DISTRICT! Morgan's time of 22:03 clocked in at a 1:01 improvement! Her smile afterwards was bigger than Hawaii!