After falling just short, Girls Track hopes to hurdle competition

Eight points isn’t a lot, but for the Park Hill Girls Track team last year those eight points meant the difference between a conference championship and finishing second behind their rival, Park Hill South. There’s no doubt they’ve come back this year with goal number one clearly laid out.

“We have a strong team, we’d like to be conference champs this year,” coach Tari Garner said.

After tuning up for the preseason with a program that focuses on running form and technique, the girls have been fortunate to be outside as much as they have with the weather as bad as it has been.

“We’ve been outside a lot for this early in the season and that’s been a definite advantage,” Garner said.

Returning are several strong components from last year’s team including sophomore Kyleesha Weston who was a state competitor in sprints and just missed qualifying in the discus event. Senior Jordan Cox will once again be competing in the shotput. She also was a state qualifier last year. Juniors Angie Reagan and Helena Hudson will compete in the distance events after just missing a trip to state last year.

“We’d like to get at least one relay to qualify for state this year,” Garner said. “Just missed it on a couple last year.”

Garner believes an important part of the success of this year’s team relies on the coaching staff and their strong ability to communicate well with each other and the athletes.

“We have all of our coaches back from last year with no turnover and they’re great with communicating with each other,” Garner said. “They work with each other really well and we’ve worked to create that kind of atmosphere.”

With so many athletes participating in multiple events, many times it’s about using practice time effectively and then making sure they are at the right events in a meet that can have multiple events happening at once.

“Our hope is you’ll see leaders from Park Hill in each event and that’s our goal to make sure the kids get to the right event so they can be successful,” Garner said. “That leads to the team being successful across the board."