The Track Meet

The time was 10:00 AM and the school track team was on the bus, on their way to the stadium for their track meet. It was a mixture of boys and girls on the bus, along with the coaches. There are different coaches for each event and race. Raelign was sitting with her group of hurdlers, Jenny, Noe, Amber, and Tyler. On the bus, Raelign kept having a weird feeling in her chest that something was going to happen during her race. She just didn’t know what it was.

10:15 the team arrives at the stadium, grabbing their bags and walking to the field surrounded by the bright red track. They placed mat’s down on the ground so they could sit down and relax when they aren’t running. Raelign put her headphones on and started to stretch since her race was in fifteen minutes. When she was running through a few sets of hurdles, she saw a man standing next to the track just starring at her. She had that same feeling in her chest when looking at him, Raelign didn’t know what to do so she kept stretching.

It's five minutes until Raelign lines up for her race, the 100-meter hurdles. No one on the team could beat her so she was very confident in herself when it came to hurdles. Coach Hamilton pulled her aside to give her one of his “inspirational speeches”, no one really listens to them, but coach was good people. She always knew that coach cared about the team, even if he never really said it.

10:25, people start putting hurdles on the track and placing them on the blue mark. Raelign see’s the man from earlier placing hurdles on the track too. This time she didn’t think nothing much of it, but she had another weird feeling in her chest when he placed the hurdles down on the track. No one checked what color mark he put them on. The gunman came out so Raelign and all the other girls competing started getting in their lanes and into their blocks. Her heart was pounding so hard from the adrenaline that she thought it was going to pop out or explode.

The gunman stands beside the girls and the whole stadium goes quiet. Realign can now hear her heart in her head now. The gunman raises his arm up. Mark…. Set…. BOOM. The gun goes off and the girls all take off running as fast as horses in the wild. Raelign cleared her first hurdle, going up to her second one. Suddenly her steps were off, she was haunted by the thought that the man was sabotaging her. When she jumped for the second hurdle, she hit the hurdle with her knee and fell. Her heart sank. The crowd all had all gasped with discomfort and it felt like all the confidence she ever had, had just vanished, like it was never there.

Suddenly she heard Coach Hamilton yelling from the sidelines saying, “GET UP, FINISH THE RACE!”. Then the whole team started yelling at her to keep going. All she needed was for someone to still believe in her. She shot back up and ran faster than she ever has before. The crowd thought she would just sit there and be disqualified but they were surprised to see her get back up, they started screaming and cheering for her. She went from seventh to sixth. Then she realized that she was in third after she had crossed the finish line. Raelign had fallen from a hurdle but got up and won a Bronze medal. The crowd, the track team and the coaches couldn’t believe what they had just watched, everyone cheering with excitement and hooraying her. She walked off the track to get her medal and when she walked back to her team, they all ran and jumped on her saying “congratulations, you did so good”. Coach Hamilton gave her hug, then everyone joined in. It turned into a giant group hug. Raelign tried to look around to see if that man from earlier was still there, but he was gone.

10:35, all the hurdlers are done with there races so all that’s left of the meet is the relays. The girls left to go home since they were done but Raelign and the boys stayed to see the 4x4 because we always held first place in that event. Coach stood next to us and started whispering to Raelign asking her if she seen a man setting up hurdles and if she knew who it was. She replied with “how did you know’? Apparently Coach Hamilton has been keeping a very close eye on him, but he never knew who it was. Raelign was just glad to hear that coach had her back.