On a day with only three events for the Cougars at State Track and Field, the girls squad came up huge!

Junior Celia Smith opened the day with the high jump, an event where she finished 9th last year, and was one of only four girls to clear 5 feet 4.5 inches to end up six spots better to earn a 3rd place on the state podium. Jump coach Curt Christensen was proud of Smith, “when most of the field fell to pieces, Celia competed and did really well.”

Madison Brown ran first in the open 800 and was in 4th place through 750 meters, but got fetched by a giant pack on the homestretch that took her out of medal contention. Brown was unphased, however, and stared at the digital scoreboard as she caught her breath, and then celebrated as 2:17.08 flashed next to her name. The new school record breaks the old by .90 seconds. Former record holder Lauren Akers called to congratulate her friend and former teammate Brown within 10 minutes. Brown’s first comment after the phone call was to smile and talk about how she is excited to make that same phone call in the next few years.

Brown was not done. With only a few hours before the preliminary race in the 4×400 relay, Brown drained and iced her legs before setting back to work.

Armed with the four best 400 runners on the team for the first time in awhile, Brown, co-MVP Emily Ambuul, lead off leg Isabella Janney, and Jeanine Smith set to work simply hoping to finish in the top three in their heat and qualify for finals. When Janney opened the race against a 55 second runner from Arapahoe, the freshman who had never broken the 60 second mark cruised into the first exchange in second with a 59.4 split. Brown had an amazing leg in 59.1 and made up ground on Arapahoe’s second leg, passing another girl to hold on to second place before giving the baton to Smith. Jeanine finished hard and put Ambuul into first place for the anchor leg which was huge because Emily was about a foot shorter than her Arapahoe counterpart and would have had to wait until after the first 100 meter curve to try and pass around her long stride. Thanks to Smith, Ambuul opened up a lead from the second she got the baton. “I figured she was a kicker and would come up on me at anytime,” said Ambuul about her 58.4 leg. Emily had more than enough juice to stave off the top seeded team. After the dust settled, Brown and her teammates earned a spot on the school record board, by 2.5 seconds, with a 3:57.16 breaking a 30 year old record, and hold on to the top time of the day heading into tomorrow’s finals.

A great day for the Cougars and tomorrow brings Smith along with fellow jumper Jaelyn Hershberger in the triple jump and the girls get a chance to hold on to their top time in the 4×400 finals.

Go get ’em Cougars!