Peyton Tries Track

Shot Put!

This spring, Peyton was very excited to participate in her middle school’s track team. Now she should have great cardio fitness due to all that swimming she does so I encouraged her to participate in the longer runs if she could. But she really wanted to do the shorter distances (minus the hurdles). 

She went to practice and just a few days before her first track meet and the day before she gets assigned what events she will run, she tells me she pulls a quad muscle in gym class and she can’t run or participate in gym. Her texts are non stop throughout the day. I tell her to take some advil and stretch it out. She tells me it really hurts. These texts back and forth all day are grating on my nerves as she shouldn’t be texting me at all during the day or especially not this much. She’s not even allowed her phone in class but she now has an Apple watch so it gives her access to me and her phone now. Ugh! 

I encourage her to still go to practice that afternoon and to practice any stationary events she can do like the shot put. She does but comes home all bummed that she won’t be running any events for this first meet. She’s going to do shot put and I tell her that’s a great event for a swimmer with a lot of upper body strength. Nevertheless, she’s still bummed.

Meet comes, I’m there for at least two hours to watch her do the shot put. She does well and secures a 17 feet and 3 inch throw. Not bad. She beats out her teammates at least. 

By the next meet she’s healed and can run. She’s going to do 3 running events. Tom and I are both there to see her run the 100 yard dash before the meet gets canceled due to a storm. Next and only meet is a home meet at Austen’s high school. Looking forward to this one but it gets canceled due to field/track availability due to rescheduled rain outs for the high school girls soccer team. Next up is now the conference meet. She’s only participated in two events and is not guaranteed an event for conference. Somehow she secures an invite to the shot put and the 100 yard relay. 

Tom and I are both there to see her shot put and she records a 17 yard and 7 inch score but it’s not enough to come back for the finals the next day. She runs the 3rd leg of the relay and her team gets disqualified for leaving too early (not her) so despite their second place finish in their heat they don’t make the finals either. 

It was a quick track season hampered by rain, storms and injuries. I'm glad she tried it but track is sort of like swimming, lots of waiting around for your kid to run a few quick events. She didn’t love it like she thought she would but she really did love riding the bus to the meets and the social aspect of joining the track team. So that’s definitely a positive. Austen did volleyball and cross country in middle school and so far Peyton has done cheer and track. Always good to be part of your school and try new things. Congrats to P!