State Track

Holy Moly! I haven't blogged in forever it seems. People probably think I've died or something. But I didn't die, I just got sorta lazy. But there are a lot of things I could blog about but first I want to blog about State Track.

Many of you already know that our girl's track team won State Track. It is a miracle that we won. We won by 1.5 points, that's like winning with a buzzer beater! We only had eight girls on our team, so we all get to say that we had to be part of the team, or we wouldn't have won. Without just one girl we would have lost. Every girl ran or threw their personal bests in ever single race. We all got our bests in prelims, and we thought, how can we do better than that in the finals tomorrow? Somehow we did though. The running conditions weren't really the best either on the last day when all the finals were, we were in a hurricane. But that hurricane was a blessing in disguise. At the time we were like, 'dang! I don't want to run in this wind!' But because of our training we were stronger than the other girls and we pushed through the wind wall and the pain and pulled out with our best times in everything.

Going into the last race, the 4x400 meter relay we knew that we had to take first and Gurnsey had to take third or we would lose. After Ashbee crossed the finish line and then we saw Snake River come in after us and Gurnsey a split second behind them, Katelyn and Olivia and Ashbee started screaming and jumping, and it took me a second before I said this. "Hey guys, does this mean we win the whole thing?" and they were like "Yeah! Or else we wouldn't be so excited!" It was such an exciting day! I am still amazed that we won!

That was the story that everyone knows. But their is a story behind the miracle of us winning, that most people don't know. I feel like we aren't the only champions, we are co-champions with our Heavenly Father. Without him blessing our lives, we would not have won. Saturday after we won and were changing before we got on the bus, this part of the story surfaced. Katelyn and Olivia had finished The Book of Mormon on Friday night in their hotel room. Sierra and Celinda had finished it earlier in the season. Ashbee, Hannah, and I also had finished during the school year, and were either reading it again or reading in another part of the scriptures. Ana Cook had two chapters left which she finished the last week of school. In seminary this year, we studied The Book of Mormon and we all took the challenge to read it. Friday night in my room, Ashbee, Ana, Hannah, and I decided to have "family prayer and scriptures" and together we looked up scriptures about faith and courage and scriptures we thought would help us in our events the next day. In the other room, like I said, Olivia and Katelyn had finished The Book of Mormon and the four girls in their room were talking about it. In the night, Katelyn said that she woke up and couldn't fall back asleep because of the excitement of it all, and instead of just lying their awake, she opened her scriptures. She said that every scripture that she turned to was about faith, or trusting in the Lord, or how by doing what is right, we are blessed not only spiritually but temporally as well. And she said that those scriptures helped her. I feel like all of the girls on our team were trying to do what is right and we feel like we were blessed that day with the championship because He recognized that we were striving to do what is right.

So many things were great about that day, like that we scored 120 points at regionals, and 116 at state. Only 4 points difference, that never happens. Or that the 26 consecutive years of having a banner hung around the gym, was done again for the 27th time, or that without a single member of our team, we would have lost. But I feel like the best part of the track season and that state track meet was that I was always surrounded by people that were trying to do what is right and not ashamed of it. That we could talk about our experiences that we had had and not be embarrassed. You know, I will always remember this time because of those experiences that we had together.