50 Tickets to Brooklyn: #35

Never Fold, it’s the Oak Park way, and for most of track season, I understood what that meant, but I didn’t KNOW what that meant until I saw Kylee’s performance at State
Owners of the last three state titles, but they needed every bit of Kylee’s points in order to defend their crowns, a 3^rd place, a 5^th place in the 800 wouldn’t have cut it
- What does Kylee do? Puts about as serious a run as I’d seen someone make toward Julia Flynn this year, hitting a 2:10 (personal best) on the way to a second-place finish
- Others may have folded, but on the big stage, Kylee didn’t. The meet didn’t go the Knights way, but even in those defeats you’re witness to big performances
It’s not as if that’s the only time Kylee has shown up in a major race, she’s been a part of multiple National and State title squads both in indoor and outdoor, while running for Motor City
Summer track tends to eat into cross country base training, but by the end of the season, she’s seemed to be right in the mix
- Each of the past two years, she’s medaled at Oakland County, qualified for State, then placed in the top-50 of Division 1
Based on the gains from this spring and summer, she has a pretty high chance of repeating, heck, bettering those feats this fall
- But I’m not gonna lie – I’m pumped to see what she does at Junior Olympics in another month

It’s funny how momentum works
- Wesley Hollowell comes onto the team and immediately produces results, Ty Nagy breaks 17:00 for the first time ever at Jackson, Alex Sullivan hits a season best – all of this leading up to Jared’s breakthrough performance at Portage
- A 25 second personal best set up a championship season to remember for him and was a useful addition in Lakeland’s run toward a 3^rd place finish at MIS
Read enough of these and you’ll notice themes that I’m drawn towards, Jared has a perfect encapsulation of continual progress
- Sub-18 in his final race as a freshman, sub-17 near the end of his sophomore year, and finally sub-16 at State this year (projected 42^nd going in, finished 25^th)
If he keeps outperforming those expectations, he has a big senior year in store as a leader for the Lakeland squad

Published by mixcspeedratings