The Berlin wall didn’t even last as long as the 1986 Coronado women’s 4×400 relay record. However, it only took 25 hours for Isabella Janney, Madison Brown, Jeanine Smith, and Emily Ambuul to break the 2016 record and establish a new one at 3:56.22. On Saturday May 21, the girls took to the track as the top seed headed into the final competition of the 5A State Championships. Teams like Arapahoe, however, learned to fear the foursome from Coronado and ran different athletes in their relays in hopes that they would find the strength to overcome. Arapahoe had two girls step to the line in their Team USA Junior Olympic warm-ups and Thunder Ridge tried to run an ineligible girl in the race hoping to unseat the Cougars. Four teams managed to vastly improve on their times enough to overleap the Cougars, many of them using medalists in the open 400 race that had happened earlier that day. When Ambuul crossed the finish line in fifth, just ahead of would-be Thunder Ridge, the girls had once again improved the best time any group from Coronado had ever run.

Another monster performance came from Jaelyn Hershberger, 10, in the triple jump. In her first state track meet, the volleyball player improved on her seed, taking her standings from 13th to 8th. With a consistent series of jumps, all six within 8 inches, and a best of 35 feet 8.25 inches in the face of a stiff 3.2 m/s wind, Hershberger made the finals and enjoyed her first state finals appearance. The winner of the event, Sydnee Larkin of Cherokee Trail, jumped a whopper at 39 feet 8.25 inches.

When the dust settled, the Lady Cougars finished in 18th place as a team. The girls set three school records; Madison Brown was a part of all of them when she set the school record in the open 800 and was the muscle leg of both record setting 4×400 relays.

Congratulations to all of the Cougars. A special thanks to the seniors on the States team for all of their hard work and leadership; a special note to all of the returners on the States team and who didn’t make it this year: now you know. Good luck.