Next came the highlight race of the day for me as the distance coach. Going into the girls mile only Ali Lindsay had met the state qualifying time of 5:30.24. We had four girls in the fast heat of the mile, all needing to PR to qualify for the state meet. They all ran a smart race, being involved immediately and all ran qualilfying times to make it to state. Karly Ackley 5th, 5:26.50 (PR 8.5 Secs), Lily Larsen 7th, 5:27.31 (PR 10.96 secs), Rachel Cox 8th, 5:28.14 (PR 16.23 secs), Ali Lindsay 10th 5:29.36. It was amazing to have four girls run state qualifying times when they had to! Rounding out the girls milers was Meghan Allan who also PR'd by 21 secs.
Nick Ackley gave his all in the boys 1600m, PR'd but came up just short by finishing 7th in the mile, followed by Alex Dianat's 9th place finish. Over at the Javelin Brandon LaHaise threw 161' 5" to punch his ticket to state and also finish 6th!. Carrington showed why he was the 2013 Cliff Cushman award winner by jumping to a 2nd place finish in the long jump.
The lone Central EDC champion came from Karly Ackley. Karly ran smart stragetic 3200m race, she took the lead with 800 meters to go and never looked back. Lily Larsen went out and tried to qualify her 2nd event of the day and ran tough but came up just short by placing 7th. Her brother, Freshman Leif Larsen turned in one of the gutsiest performances of the day in the 3200m run for the boys. Going into the race Leif had the goal of placing in the top 6 and being the first freshman distance runner for Central boys in the 3200m to make it to the state meet. With one lap to go, Leif was over 50m out of 6th. Over the last 200m Leif passed the Davies runner to finish 6th in a time of 10:08.55, tenths of second from breaking the freshman record. But he earned one more chance to break that record by running at the state meet.