COLLINSVILLE – Despite a half-hour delay in the start of the meet, rainy and stormy weather couldn’t keep the Collinsville Invitational girls track meet from taking place Friday evening.
Only O’Fallon outdid Edwardsville and O’Fallon, the Panthers scoring 155.5 points to take the team title; the Tigers trailed with 99 points, followed by the Redbirds with 71 points, Belleville West with 60 points and the host Kahoks rounding out the top five with 49 points.
“It was OK,” said Edwardsville coach Camilla Eberlin of the Tiger performance on the evening. “We were a little bit running with the weather, not quite up to our peak, but we had some really good things – both of our two-milers (Julianna Determan and Hannah Stuart) had big PRs, Abby (Schrobeglin) had a PR, Quierra Love ran another good 200, our 4×100 wasn’t quite as solid as it was Tuesday (at the Madison County large-school meet in Granite City) and our 4×400 ended the meet with a good first two (legs).”
Eberlin felt the delay didn’t affect her runners. “We tell them they’ve got to learn to run in it,” Eberln said. “This very well could be (IHSA) sectional weather, we’ve just got to figure it out. We did well; we did some good things, we found some things that need a little more tweaking coming into the last couple of meets.”
“I think we did good,” said Redbird coach Jada Moore. “We got a chance to work on our relays so we can prepare for state; we’ve got Kellie (Mans) who placed first in her (section of the) 400 (meters). We’re trying to drop her time so she can qualify for state. We had a first place from Jeanea Epps in the 100 – it’s just good to to finally start seeing they’re dropping times and we’re so close to state qualifying times.
Moore was happy that the rain held off to get the meet in after it was threatened by severe storms earlier in the afternoon. “We were happy to get it in,” Moore said. “I had to let them know, ‘hey, just like you’re competing in this weather, so are the other teams.’ I think I gave them a pretty good pep talk to have them get out here and just go, so I’m proud of them. You can’t control Mother Nature, so we have to get out there and compete.”
Both teams will be in Wednesday’s Southwestern Conference Championship at East St. Louis.
