November 4, 2014

  • Qualifying for State

    Thursday proved to be very wet and rainy. Runners ran with the longest spikes to gain any traction possible on this treacherous course.
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    The Sea-King District 3A Championship Cross Country Meet would decide which schools would go on to compete in State. Our girl, Veronica, ran in the sixth slot of seven on the Ballard High School Varsity Cross Country team.

    The Varsity Men ran first.
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    The first turn is not only muddy but the field of about 90 runners choke down to an eight foot wide path. I learned from previous races on this course to stand well back and off the race course or risk getting run over.

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    The men's team finished 5th, qualifying them for state. Go Ballard! His shirt shows how hard they worked along the course.

    For the girls race, I positioned myself to get a few shots near the middle of the run.
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    This is the first short hill the runners encounter. I like this sequence because it shows Veronica stealing a glimpse of her father in the last shot! (enlarge the picture and you can see her eyes darting to her right)

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    On this downhill section one runner fails to negotiate the turn. Veronica makes it through without incident.

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    This final picture summarizes the whole day. My Nikon D90 was not quite as quick as I needed it to be. Too many shots either did not actuate the shutter or focus where I wanted them to. Today was wet, muddy, and difficult to get the action shots I wanted. The story here is the clock on the right. Veronica's personal record for 5k is 20 minutes and 25 seconds. Today she crossed the line (that is her blonde hair in the center) at 20:52. Although this was her slowest time of the season, all her times fell within 25 seconds of each other. The back story is that she finished 6th on her team of 7. The coach pulled me aside after the race to explain that Ballard High and Garfield High actually tied for second place. After scoring the top five finishers on each team they both had a score of 113. That means the officials look at the finishing place of the 6th place runner (Veronica). That was enough to put Ballard ahead. Follow this link to see the complete results. Here is an article in the local paper mentioning Veronica.