Liz Cox with former Downers Grove North legendary girls coach Bruce Ritter at the Ritter Invite
We’re at that time of the season again where small dual meets are becoming scarce and many large invites are being run throughout the state. Dual meets are a great place to try different events and work on different things, but invites are where the real fun happens in my opinion.
Last week we had a couple invites starting with the famed Ritter Invite at Downers Grove North on Thursday night. This meet has always been one of the best invites in the state and holds great competition for us every year, but we also remember it as the meet with the really good shirts. I don’t normally buy t-shirts at meets, but my teammates and I always get a shirt at the Ritter. They’ve got every color of the rainbow, they sell tie-dye or plain, and they always have a cool design. It’s important to buy them early because they sell out fast. Last year I bought a shirt and realized it was different from the ones my teammates bought. Mine had bats on it. Everyone started laughing and wondering why I got a messed up shirt. We later found out it was a batman reference that they only put on a few of the shirts because sometimes they call Coach (Bruce) Ritter Bruce Wayne. Coach Ritter himself said it was pretty special that I ended up with one of these shirts because they’re quite rare.
The usually reliable Palatine 4x8 quartet suffered a baton mishap at Ritter Invite
Shirts aside, the meet went well as we saw solid performances across the board and placed third, only a few points behind talented teams Aurora West and Prospect. I was especially proud of some freshman we moved up on the sprint side who handled the intense competition very well. There were a small number of relay hand-off mishaps, but not in the 4x1 or 4x2 like you would expect. In the 4x8 there was a collision at the line right after our anchor leg got the baton, causing the baton to go flying in the air and onto the infield. Luckily, our girl was able to pick up the baton and we still finished in 3rd place.
As fun as the meet was, it didn’t quite feel like my final time at the Ritter. The weather was beautiful, which I’m not complaining about, but it’s always cold and rainy at this meet. Also, I’m used to running this meet on a Friday night and coming back and running another meet Saturday morning (a back to back state-like simulation).
However, due to Good Friday, this meet was moved to Thursday night. At least we kept our tradition of stopping at McDonald’s after the meet. An odd tradition, for a team that often stresses eating right, but you’ve got to get some fuel somewhere after a long night of competing.
Saturday we traveled out to Geneva for another Invite. Once again we had a lot of solid performances and we were able to secure the meet championship over quality opponents Geneva, St. Charles North, Burlington Central and others.
With four meets in a stretch of eight days, we had people in different events and some girls who don’t typically compete on varsity got a chance in this invite. Having such a deep team, some of these girls were able to step up and score high points for us. A Shout-Out to these girls for a great job scoring in a varsity invite: Katelyn Nix in the 100m, Gabi Wilson in the 400m, Maribel Esquivel double-scoring in discus and shot-put, and Madi Berg running a personal best to place 2nd in the 800m. The weather was also gorgeous and many girls got to work on their suntan out on the infield.
We host Invites the next two Saturdays and we’re looking forward to seeing some great teams on our home turf.