Liz Cox hoisted the Palatine Relays 1st place trophy at the 82nd Annual Palatine Relays
This past weekend we hosted the 82nd Palatine Relays. Palatine Relays has always been my favorite track meet. When I was younger I often came to watch the Palatine Relays and always dreamed about when I would be able to compete in it. I actually got my first chance to do this when I was in 8th grade in the Jr. High Relay event, but I couldn’t wait until I got to compete as a high school athlete. The combination of great competition, unique events, and being able to represent Palatine on our home turf always makes it a special day. My senior year Palatine Relays was no disappointment.
Record setting Lady Pirates in DMR: Liz Cox (1200-3:52.0), Caitlin (400-62.2), Cassidy McPherson (800-2:20.6), and Kelly O'Brien (1600-5:07.9)
One of the things I love about being a runner at Palatine is all the rich history and tradition of the program. One of the traditions is the Thursday before the Palatine Relays the boys and girls teams come together for a pasta dinner. Aside from carbo-loading, we raffle off prizes each year and hear from a guest-speaker who often tells us about some Palatine Track history and pumps us up to make our own history on Saturday. This year’s speaker was former Palatine great Ruth Allen. I remember when I was in 8th grade I came to the Palatine Relays and watched in awe as Ruth won the 800m and set a new school record of 2:11.6. To have her come back and talk about that race and hear advice from her was really special.
One piece of advice Ruth gave us was to feed off the energy from the crowd and to feed off the successes of your teammates. She said teammates competing early in the meet can help get others ready by doing their best and sharing their success to build up enthusiasm on the team. This is exactly what we did Saturday. I arrived at the meet Saturday morning and already we had great performances. My first race was the Distance Medley Relay, and our relay tried to feed off this positive energy. We were also going for the school record (12:25). I lead-off with the 1200m, Caitlin Riedy ran the 400m, Cassidy McPherson ran the 800m, and Kelly O’Brien finished with the 1600m. We managed to win the race and break the record in running a 12:23. Our whole team was happy for us, and I hope it gave them some positive energy to bring into their events.
Coach Parks giving St. Ignatius coach Steve Bulgarin a beating in the coach's mile
It was a crazy, windy day with several “interesting” incidents. Fremd’s Nick Macias was running the final lap of the 1600 in the boys DMR when a gust picked up a high jump mat, blowing it onto Nick and knocking him down. He was able to untangle himself, get up and still split a 4:37 to help his team take 2nd place- a very impressive effort in an “anything can happen” event.
Right after the DMR was an intermission that included senior recognition, and the premier event of the day: the alumni mile. This is always a big deal to our team because our Coach Joe Parks always runs it. This year he was going for his 22nd straight year running a mile under 4:30. Since he’s a coach who always supports us so much, we try to support him in this event each year. My teammates and I were scattered around the track cheering for him. I was trying to scream some race advice at him. I’m not really sure if he heard it, but he did pull out the win in 4:25! It’s also always fun to cheer on other alums, and parents who run this in the middle of a long day of volunteering at the meet. Nice job guys, and thank you to all the meet volunteers for all your help.
The day finished with the 4x400m, which is always a barn-burner. It was fun to cheer on our girls as they displayed toughness in getting second, while every single one of our girls on that relay was in at least their 3rd event of the day. We heard right before the boy’s 4x400m went off that the Palatine boys were winning the meet, but it would probably come down to this last event. All our girls and boys lined the track and ran back and forth across the infield, even the girls who had just run the 4x400m. The race was close with our boys placing third in a 3-team photo finish, but no one knew the exact numbers and if it meant we had won the meet or not.
It was time to wait it out while they tabulated results. Meanwhile Reidy was awarded female athlete of the meet. She had a full plate on Saturday and came up strong placing 1st in the 300m hurdles, 1st in the DMR, 1st in the shuttle hurdles, and 2nd in the 4x400m. We then heard we won the team championship and were awarded our trophy. We were all so excited, but still anxiously awaiting how the boys did. When the announcer read off Palatine boys in first place everyone went crazy. Both the girls and boys winning the championship on our home turf was a great way to end my last Palatine Relays.