On March 19 four female Salem Hills high school runners broke the long-standing 4×800 meter relay school record in a time of 10:32, beating the old record by nine seconds.
According to athlete Brie Erickson, the team went at the race with the goal to beat the record.
“It was the goal to break the record!” she said. “We saw that the record wouldn’t be hard to break, so through the indoor track season, we tried to convince girls to do the 4×800 with us so that we could break the record.
“We each needed a 2:40 split. The day before the race we got our last girl, we practiced handoffs once before we raced, and we broke it!”
Salem Hills track coach, Jen Hughes said that it was fun to watch the girls reach their goal.
“They are such a tight group of girls, and it was fun to watch them beat the record,” Hughes said. “Each one of them wants to do well, and they are all so encouraging of each other and others on the team.”
The 4 x 800 meter relay requires that each runner run two laps (half a mile) before handing the baton to the next athlete. The relay has been around for a long time, but it wasn’t until this year when the relay was added as a state qualifying event.
Due to the event being “new” to state qualifying events, there haven’t been many chances to break the record, which according to Hughes, makes this record a little special.
Brie said that it was a fun race to run, and exciting to watch her teammates work together.
“It felt awesome to break the record. After the race, our voices were gone from screaming and cheering because we were so happy we broke it. I’ve never smiled bigger after a race.”
The other runners were Amelia Hunter, Abigail Kirby and Lucy Groberg. (Serve Daily submission.)
