While it’s not unusual for the boys’ track team to bring multiple athletes to the regional track meet, as this year they are bringing 11 student athletes, the girls’ team is taking the most they ever have with nine girls heading to U.T. Arlington on Friday and Saturday to compete for the chance at qualifying for state.

“We have two relays that qualified. All of the girls except for Nissi and Carrie that qualified in running were in relays so that’s why we’ve been focusing on just relays so that we can cut down seconds,” head girls track coach Amanda Byers said. “If we can cut down a second or two in each hand off then we can get even faster.”

The group of girls that will be competing includes Eryka Anderson, Sanye Ford, Nissi Kabongo, Carrie Fish, Kiara Hackett, Khaje Fassitt, Gabriela Leyva-Montreal, Crystal Wang, and Lauren Girdner. 

“We’ve been preparing at practice and even though we didn’t have school on Monday we came early to practice and we’ve been working on our handoffs and everything,” sophomore Kiara Hackett said. “It’s looking good right now.”

Competing in the 4×400, sophomore Khaje Fassitt has been training harder specifically for this meet.

“We’re are doing a lot of conditioning, a lot of running, and also lifting a lot of weights,” Fassitt said. “I will be really happy and work as hard as I ever did before because I know it’s not easy to compete with people who compete in state.” 

Despite a bid to state on the line, senior Eryka Anderson is ready to continue to be successful in her last year on the school’s track team.

“I was extremely excited because we broke the school record in both of the events,” Anderson said. “So that was really uplifting and I PRed in my split for my 400 for the 4×400 so we were all really excited and pumped for it.”

Since sophomore Nissi Kabongo and junior Carrie Fish both competed in the Texas Relays event, regionals and state aren’t as intimidating.

“Texas Relays really gave me a mental visualization,” Kabongo said. “It was like a preparation for how state is going to go because it’s basically the same group of athletes competing there so it was a good preparation.”

With Byers taking the most girls to regionals than ever before, the team is excited to see what they can do in the 5A Region II meet this weekend.

“I am nervous but I’m also really happy because I know we worked hard to get here and all our hard work is paying off,” Fassitt said. “We were really happy because, I’ve been on varsity for two years, this is the farthest we’ve gone so far.”