RACE REPORT: DISTRICTS (III)

The rollercoaster of emotions began after our district meet ended on Friday. The nerves were already affecting me again when I ate my french fries after my race. I was so nervous about qualifying. We just had to qualify, we wanted to so badly. We wanted to run at state, we had worked towards that goal.

On Saturday, I was up at an early 9:30. I knew that there was no way I'd find out whether we made it until after 2:00, when the postponed districts were over. I couldn't help but being nervous though, the waiting was already getting to me. Whenever I was home, I was checking the computer until I decided that they weren't going to post it at 10:30.

Sunday morning came and I checked the newspaper for the district results. Seeing that we had placed ahead of 4th place in that district, I actually believed we had a chance. So I ran downstairs and checked out the website. The tenative cut off times were posted and at 10:28, we were under. What I really felt when I saw that was relief, we had done it. We were going to state. I told my parents and then found out JS had texted me at 2:00 in the morning when she found out. We were estastic. I even had ice cream to celebrate at supper.

Checking the website to see if they had the lists of qualifiers up, was when the real rollercoaster began. I glanced at it casually, making sure we were on there. Except we weren't. I checked again, making sure I didn't overlook it. We weren't on there. Using our school name and my name, I looked to make sure they didn't put our names under the wrong spot. It wasn't on there, I was freaking out. Why weren't we on there? We had to have qualified.

I called JS and we had a 50 minute conversation. She had called our coach (she had called him) and he didn't know what was going on. We knew we had run under 10:28, we had run about 10:23. We tried to think if we had been disqualified or what could have kept us from qualifying. Both of us were very upset, we thought we were going to state and now they were telling us we weren't.

JS and I met before school to talk to our coach. He seemed upset and didn't know what was going on. Two hours later, we met with the head coach. He told us the results showed we had run 10:35. We knew that we weren't that slow, my dad, the assistant coach, and our coach had all timed us at somewhere around 10:23. The head coach told us he was talking to our athletic director, who was contacting the people in charge of our district and the state meets. They would review the video of our finish, when I crossed the line, and if the timer wouldn't work, they'd time how far I was behind 4th place. Even though my coach didn't know anything more at lunch, we felt that we were getting it worked out.

An hour before school was out, JS told me that the state qualifying list for our class had been taken down from the internet. We were excited, we were making progress. None of the coaches knew anything more at practice, but they were pretty confident that they could get the problem fixed.

JS called me a couple hours after school to tell me that the list is back up. It's not changed. We aren't on it. And now we don't know what to do. We have to depend on other people and on that video. We don't know what the people in charge are doing. The list was probably taken down to correct sprinter's times, but they don't seem to be doing anything about us.

It didn't seem to matter what we did, but we weren't going to stop fighting. I called my coach (this is how much I want it) but he wasn't there so he called me back. This was very awkward but state is worth it. He had noticed they put the list back up but he didn't know what they were doing about us. He said he'd talk to the athletic director and let us know that he was working on it.

The longer it takes though, the less chance we have of going to state. I thought before that it would be bad if we didn't go to state and we knew we could've gone with the other girl. That is better than our situation we are finding ourselves in, knowing that we ran the time to qualify but because of someone else's mistake, we might not get to go. We have to go though, we have fought so much for it. We don't know how much more we can do though, but we will do as much as we can.