by Shannon McCarthy, staff writer<\/p>\n
For the first time in nine years, the River Hill girls indoor track team took home the County championship title. They improved tremendously from last season\u2019s fourth-place finish in the county. Entering the season, River Hill were the underdogs, but they exceeded the county\u2019s expectations. <\/p>\n
The Hawks have worked extremely hard this season to reach this level of success. \u201cWe each did our part, every runner coming out to practice every day getting stronger and faster,\u201d says sophomore, Amina El-Ashry.
\nThe Howard County Championships were on Monday, January 29. River Hill\u2019s major opponent at the meet was the Atholton Raiders. It was not an easy win; the Hawks faced many obstacles as the end of the meet approached. They finished last in the second heat and sixth overall all in the final event. At this point, the team had lost any hope of coming home with the County Championship. <\/p>\n
Tiamfook, tells The Baltimore Sun, <\/p>\n
\u201cI thought we didn\u2019t have it, that was scary.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
Some extreme factors to the teams win was Tiamfook winning the 800-meter run. Senior Olivia Island finished first in the pole vaulting event, beating runner-up sophomore Madison Garrigus from Atholton. Freshman Faith Meininger won the 1,600-meter race and the 3,200-meter race, beating the expected winner, senior Emily Beyer from Mt. Hebron. This left the Hawks having a 10 point lead prior to the last event of the night.<\/p>\n
Along with gaining many high scoring ranks, their team chemistry and dedication increased their level of success. \u201cWe had to work hard for each other which is pushing each other in and outside of practice, especially on race days we love to stay pumped and encourage each other during our races,\u201d states Baker.<\/p>\n
The team also has had some changes that have helped them thrive this season. Tiamfook says, \u201cwe had a lot of new additions to the team like Faith Meininger and Sydney Robinson as well as some big improvements from others like
\nOlivia Island, Ada Beams, and Chelsea Baker\u201d<\/p>\nRiver Hill finished the night with a total of 111 points. Their runner-up was Atholton with 107.33 points and in third place Mt. Hebron with 96 points.<\/p>\n
The Hawks have gained two tremendous checkpoints in the season, County Championship and Regional Championship. They are now striving for an even bigger goal, State Champions. Baker says, \u201cour final goal at this point is definitely winning states by the biggest point margin possible and seeing all of our hard work pay off. We just want to be the strongest team we can possibly be and challenge the other strong teams in our final meet of the season.\u201d The State Champion meet this year is taking place Monday, February 19, at the Prince George\u2019s Sports and Learning Complex.
\nThis year’s Indoor Track team has continued River Hill\u2019s dominance from the fall into the winter and have their minds set on bringing home a State Championship. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"by Shannon McCarthy, staff writer For the first time in nine years, the River Hill girls indoor track team took home the County championship title. They improved tremendously from last season\u2019s fourth-place finish in the county. Entering the season, River Hill were the underdogs, but they exceeded the county\u2019s expectations. The Hawks have worked extremely…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":851,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-850","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-sports"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"http:\/\/riverhillcurrent.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/03\/ph-hs-indoor-track-and-field-county-championships-20180129.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/riverhillcurrent.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/850","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/riverhillcurrent.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/riverhillcurrent.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/riverhillcurrent.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/10"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/riverhillcurrent.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=850"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/riverhillcurrent.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/850\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":864,"href":"http:\/\/riverhillcurrent.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/850\/revisions\/864"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/riverhillcurrent.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/851"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/riverhillcurrent.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=850"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/riverhillcurrent.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=850"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/riverhillcurrent.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=850"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}