From Feb. 1-3, the girls track team participated in the Gunston District Championship Meet at Episcopal high school.

The team felt they did great in the championship and the results proved them correct.

“We performed very well and some remarkable things happened at the meet” Coach Phil Harris said.

Many of the relay teams had an outstanding performance where runners beat their seed times. The girls 4×800 relay took fourth place, but beat their seed time by a whopping 45 seconds with a time of 10:43.

In the 4×200 relay, they rallied to finish second in front of Hayfield and West Potomac, who each earned a time of 1:56.

The 4×400 relay was also successful as they placed third in the district with a time of 4:20:53. Unfortunately, West Potomac beat Annandale in that event by fractions of a second.

“The absolute highlight of the meet was when one of our runners placed [third] in the 1000 meter run, which has not happened in the last five years of indoor track,” Harris said.

There were many more girls to qualify for regionals this year than in many past years.

“Overall, this success in the Gunston District Championship which featured runners advancing to the regional meet from many of our events came from tough practices,” Harris said.

The Occoquan Regional Meet will be held on Feb. 12. 18 teams in total will be participating, including Annandale.

“The team has improved remarkably from repeats on the track to work their endurance along with many speed workouts,” Harris said.

These tough workouts were the reason for why so many athletes earned PRs since the start of the season.

“Coaches are great for always believing in us and helping us improve. Especially for times when we want to quit,” Vitalina Fuentes, a junior on the team, said.

Vitalina ran the 4×800 relay, mile, and two-mile events.

“In order to remain successful in the regional meet, we have been working on mostly speed to sharpen our skills beforehand. Right now, we are focusing more on speed rather than endurance,” Harris said.

Annandale track measured improvements by timing each workout and comparing results of the same workout through the season.

“I plan to improve by training earlier and putting in more mileage before the season starts,” Fuentes said.

Many of those who participated in indoor track, however, will not be doing outdoor track in the spring due to conflicts with other sports like soccer.

“We have the talent to do well during the outdoor track season, but, we need the same or even more commitment that we had during the winter season because they want to work hard and improve is the basis of skill in this sport,” Harris said.  

Overall, girls track is looking to have a positive outdoor track season with their major improvements made during their indoor season.