The girls both joined the middle school cross-country team this season and have been learning a lot about pacing and how hard they can really push their bodies to go over a distance. Kaelia was consistently the first girl on the team until recently when Taelyn took that position as she figured out her pacing a little more. Team Walker is a strong addition to the team this year!
I am also coaching high school cross-country, so I had the opportunity to travel with both middle and high school teams for the races which means I got to see the girls race too. Last weekend, we traveled about 4.5 hours away to Wroclaw, Poland for the PAAC championships where we competed against two other international schools in Poland. Taelyn won the entire middle school girls' 2.5km race in 10:52, and Kaelia came in 7th in 11:45.
This past weekend, the girls got another shot at racing as we flew to Munich for the SCIS championships. This meet was a much more competitive weekend than Wroclaw with teams from Vienna, Budapest, Zurich, Basel, and Munich. The girls raced 3.5km the first day where Kaelia finished 10th to earn a ribbon for a top 10 performance and was the first girl for our team. Taelyn struggled a bit that day with her glasses and had to stop a few times when they fell off her face from too much sweat.
The next day was a 2.5km race where Taelyn came back with a vengeance and placed 7th with a time of 11:03. Kaelia improved her 2.5km time from last week to 11:23 and finished 12th that day. The awards ceremony was soon after that race where both girls got their top 10 ribbons, and our teams earned overall awards: the
HS girls were 2nd, the HS boys were 5th, the MS girls were 4th, and the MS boys were 3rd. With all four teams combined, our school came home with a 2nd place overall finish - the highest our school has ever earned at this meet.
We have had two great weekends of travel and racing. Our next and final meet is in one month. We are so proud of our girls for their hard work ethic and can't wait to see what they do in their next race.
