Track meet tension — and joy

Saguaro's Katie Drake (center) takes the baton from teammate Katie Alhadeff for the anchor leg of the 4x100 relay at Friday's Scottsdale City track meet. The team from Chaparral (left) is about to make the exchange while a runner from Desert Mountain (right) awaits her teammate.

Watching a high school track meet in the early evening this time of year is a relaxing and stress-free activity — unless your child is competing in the meet.  On Friday night, I went over to Chaparral High School to watch the Scottsdale City Track Meet, which is held annually for the five Scottsdale Unified School District Schools — Arcadia, Chaparral, Coronado, Desert Mountain and Saguaro.

In particular, I wanted to see Saguaro’s Katie Drake run the 100-, 200- and 400- meter races and the 4×100 relay. Katie is the daughter of Raising Arizona Kids Senior Account Executive Susie Drake and her husband, Scott.

Katie, now a junior, has been running since she was 7 years old.  “I started running because my mom thought I would like it,” Katie said Friday, “and then I grew to love it.”

Katie’s parents made their best effort to remain calm during the meet, but whenever Katie was on the track that facade fell away. There were emotional ups and downs as Katie finished second in the 100 meters, ran the winning anchor leg in the 4×100 relay (after overcoming a difficult baton exchange) and then ran out of gas in the 400 meters, where she had the lead in the last 100 meters but finished fourth.

Katie had plenty of gas left for her last race, however, as she finished first with a time of 27:39. As Katie crossed the finished line, Susie thrust her arms in the air with joy and quickly walked down the stands to congratulate her daughter.

After the last race, I asked Katie what it was like to run four races in a period of about two hours, including running the 400 meters within 10 minutes of finishing the 4×100 relay. “It was horrible!” Katie said while beaming and holding her first place medal. As you can see from the photo I took a moment later, it couldn’t have been too bad.

Katie Drake flanked by her parents, Susie and Scott, after winning the 200 meters .

As I started to leave the meet, I came upon Mary K. Reinhart, who was there to watch her daughter Emily, a Chaparral sophomore, compete in the last event of the evening: the girls’ pole vault. A year ago, Mary K. wrote in this blog about watching Emily try a new sport as a freshman.

“Emily is still working on getting over the bar in competition,” Mary K. wrote at that time. As we waited for the pole vault to begin, Mary K. wondered aloud whether here attendance this evening was “bad luck” for Emily. “Her event is usually the first one of the meet, so I never get to see it because of work,” said Mary K., who is one of the top political reporters in the state at The Arizona Republic.

As everyone in the crowd, and indeed many of the other competitors of the five schools, watched the final event of the evening, Emily proved that her mom’s attendance did not spell doom for her. A lot had happened in the past year. Emily may have been “still working on getting over the bar in competition” a year ago, but on this evening she won the Scottsdale City meet.

“Wow,” said her mom quietly. “Wow.” — Dan Barr

A chance to soar

I was lost when I walked into my first Chaparral High track and field meet this season. What were the events again? I knew there were sprints and distance events, some jumping and throwing and relays of some sort. I wasn’t quite sure which part was track and which was field. I knew a little bit about the pole vault, because for some reason my freshman daughter had decided to try planting a 12-foot pole into a three-foot hole and see if she could soar into the air.

Emily Kaplan, the author's daughter, attempts a vault during track practice at Chaparral High School in Scottsdale.

I had arrived late, and I didn’t know the order of things. How much had I missed? How long do these things go on? And where were my kids among the sea of red and white Firebird warmups lounging on the football field inside the track?

Standing by the fence along the finish line, I hoped one of them would see me and decide to acknowledge me. Then Emily came racing down the track, in what I later learned was the 200-meter dash. She came in second in an exhibition heat. Looked good to me, but she was disappointed because she hadn’t beaten her best time.

Best times. Exhibition heats. A co-ed sport that offers plenty of time for socializing and flirting between events. This was starting to sound familiar.

Our children have been swimmers for many years, and the similarities are striking. I knew from our swim coaches that track was great cross-training, but I never realized the two sports had so much in common. The scoring has parallels, with points given in descending order based on your finish, all combined for the team score at the end of the meet. You try different events and, as you grow, begin to specialize in one or two. Like swimming, the athletes carb load at pasta parties before each meet.

Chaparral has some terrific track and field athletes, including state champ pole vaulter Liz Portanova, sprinter Nikko Landis, twin distance runners Shane and Shawn Maule, and triple-jumper Cody Moore. They benefit from an excellent coaching staff, with decades of experience and an Olympic gold medal in the trophy case of pole vault coach Nick Hysong.

But it’s a huge team and it appears that most of the kids, like mine, are there to learn and have fun and stay in shape. That takes a lot of the pressure off the kids, though it’s not necessarily a recipe for a championship team. Maybe that’s not surprising, given all the emphasis on football, basketball and baseball, and the club sports that take up every moment in between. Still, it’s a shame for those dedicated, one-sport athletes who miss the chance to sample what high school has to offer and try something new.

I find my way to the bleachers and recognize a family whose son joined the team last year. They patiently answer my questions and explain some of the rules. I’m still scouring the field for my son when he whizzes by in another exhibition heat of the 200-meter dash. It’s his first race ever and he looks great.

It occurs to me that I’ve never seen my kids run like that, a full-on sprint with techniques they had surely learned in the past few weeks of practice. They might never run track again, but these were lessons they could take with them. I was learning, too, about a new sport, meeting a new batch of families who were cheering on the team and reacquainting with parents I hadn‘t seen in years.

The regular season ends with a home meet April 21 against Desert Mountain, followed by the Scottsdale City Meet on April 28. That’s likely the end of the season for my junior-varsity track dabblers. Regionals and finals are set for early May.

Emily is still working on getting over the crossbar in competition. I’m in awe that she’s chosen what looks like an impossibly difficult event and she loves it. But she turned down her first chance to compete at the last meet, afraid that she’d fail, and she wasn’t entirely happy with her decision. That’s the beauty of high school: You can still miss opportunities, make mistakes and take chances, without so much at stake. The next opportunity she gets to soar into the air, I’m betting she takes it. — Mary K. Reinhart