West Potomac High School is hosting their annual Running is Elementary Track Meet this week. Every year the West Potomac Track & Field team hosts a track meet for the West Potomac pyramid of elementary schools to compete in. Like in previous years, the meet is separated into two days. On Monday May 6th, kindergarten through 3rd grade will be competing and on Thursday May 9th, 4th grade through 6th grade will be competing.
For the past month, West Potomac track athletes have been going to the competing elementary schools once a week and working with the kids to prepare them for their competitions. The elementary school students will be competing in a wide variety of track and field events. Those events include individual running races like the 100, 200, and 400 meter dashes and the 1600 meter(1 mile) race, the 110m and 300m hurdle events, the 4×100 and 4×400 relay races, and field events including standing long jump for K-3rd grades and traditional running long jump for 4th-6th grade along with softball throw.
The West Potomac athletes went to the elementary schools every Tuesday for four weeks before the meet. The athletes worked with the elementary students to improve their skills over all of the events offered at the final meet. They did activities like relay races, sharks and minnows, hurdles, softball throw, sprints, and running laps. The practices were to help them improve their skills and also to see what events they may prefer over the others. After all the practices were over the elementary students then picked three events each to compete in. They choose based on what events they liked the most and what events they were best at.
While the event is just for fun, schools will get points based on how well the athletes place and there will be a winning school decided after the meets are over. The schools competing in the Running is Elementary meet are Fort Hunt, Belle View, Waynewood, Stratford Landing, Bucknell, and Hollin Meadows elementary school.
As a reminder the meets will take place on Monday May 6th and Thursday May 9th and will start at 4:30pm both days. The meets are expected to end around 8:00pm but it varies depending on how fast the events are going. Everyone is encouraged to come to both days and all the money raised at the meet goes towards the West Potomac Track & Field team.
