The Rebels surged to a fantastic 4th place tie with Hockaday in the second day of competition at TCU. The Rebels had many PR performances at SPC with contributions from all event participants. In the first day of competition Melissa Hulme got the Rebels off to a good start in the 3200m run where she finished 2nd and garnered an all SPC title. In the discus, Nicci Owusu Brackett threw for 4th place. We lacked points after competition in the high and triple jumps as we went into preliminary running events on the first day of competition. The end of the day was completed with a PR 10:39.47 performance by the 4x800 relay team of Hulme, Bell, Daniel, and Nielsen, who finished 6th (6points) overall. Fluctuating back and forth from 7 to 9th, the Rebels had their work cut out for them in day 2 of competition. The 4x100 team of Miller, Owusu-Brackett, Magee and Keller finished 5th witha season PR of 51.77. With the completion of the 4x100 we hung onto 7th place. Sallie Armstrong had an outstanding day, earning all SPC honors for her incredible victory in the 100H, 3rd place PR peformance in the long jump and 3rd place finish in the 300H. Sallie was the high point scorer for the Rebles, earning 24.5 of the 74 total team points scored by St. John's. Also in the long jump, freshman, Sophia Golvach finished 8th, contributing 1 point to the team effort. In pole vault, Stephanie Melton finished 8th. Demonstrating great stamina, Hulme again gathered points for the Rebels with her 5th place finish in the 800 meter run. Courtney Miller contributed points to the Rebels with her 6th place finish in the open 400. The Rebels however had their work cut out for them going into the final two events of the meet: the 1600m run and the 4x400 meter relay. The Rebels began the 1600 with 57 points and in the #7 team spot, chasing 6th place Holland Hall with 64 points, #5 Casady with 65 points, and #4 Hockaday with 66 points. Casady had 3 competitors entered in the 1600 and all were seeded behind Hulme and Nielsen. Holland Hall had 1 potentially threatening 1600m runner, whom Hulme readily defeated. Nielsen ran a stellar PR 8th place (by .04 seconds) performance, adding 1 crucial point to the Rebels team total. Hulme and Nielsen's points raised our team total to 64, which held us in 7th, 5 points behind Holland Hall (who finished 4th in the 1600) and 1 point behind Casady, going into the 4x400. We were seeded .04 seconds ahead of Casady in the slower heat of only 3 teams (including Trinity Valley) in the 4x400m relay. The team of Miller, Bell, Armstrong and Keller, finished their first relay performance together at the Kinkaid invitational, in March, in a time of 4:25.04 (well behind Casady's entry time). Holland Hall was seeded in the fast heat, nearly 5 seconds ahead of the Rebels and looked to finish 6th overall. The daisy's from Hockaday were seeded 3rd. In order to beat Casady we had to win our heat of the 4x400, which would at least guarantee us an 8th place finish (garnering 2 points, to put us ahead of Casady by 1). If we ran well to a first place finish in our heat and crossed our fingers we might have a shot at Holland Hall. The Rebels put the pedal to the floor and ran far better than "well". Miller handed off to Bell fairly even with Casady, Trinity Valley trailed the Rebels. As Bell came around, she handed off to Sallie in second place. Sallie busted out an amazing performance motoring past Trinity Valley in the home stretch to hand the baton to Keller in first place, who expanded our lead to 10 seconds over Casady and 3.39 seconds ahead of Trinity Valley. This Rebel PR performance was 5.32 seconds faster than our fastest 4x400 time all season. We knew we had beaten Casady, and had a guarntee of at least an 8th place 4x4 finish (2 points) and 6th place overall team finish. However, the excitement grew as we were still uncertain how we would fair against Holland Hall who had the benefit of running against fast competition. If Holland Hall finished 7th place overall (last in their heat) they would beat us. Unless their time was poor enough and our time fast enough, to knock them out of scoring, we would hold firm at 6th. Holland Hall was running in 6th place or better through all three hand offs. Coming into the home stretch of the final leg, Holland Hall still hung onto 6th, however All Saints had a surge at the end to overtake the Dutch by .10 seconds, putting them in 7th and allowing us to breath a sigh of relief. For sure they had not finished better than 7th. As splits were read off, our 4x400 PR time was commanding. Our relay time was not only faster than Holland Hall, but also Hockaday's team who finished 6th in 4:19.46, 4.78 seconds BEHIND the Rebels. We kept Holland Hall out of 5th place with this finish. Although we had finished ahead of Hockaday, we would not have enough points to compete with their 5th place team finish in the relay. Thrilled to have beaten Holland Hall and Casady, we did not even realize that Trinity Valley's time from the slow heat had squeeked inside of Hockaday's relay time, to put them back one slot in finishing order, taking 2 points away. This official result guaranteed the Rebels of a tie for fourth place with Hockaday! In the end the Rebels 4x400 PR performance was merely .32 seconds behind 3rd place, all conference EHS, and had sealed an unpredictably awesome 4th place overall team finish for the 2004 season. Congratulations to the entire 2004 Rebel girls track team!!! Thanks to all the parents for all of your support of your daughters efforts throughout the season!!