Lovejoy girls pose after 4x800 relay
Photo Credit: David Dulaney - Arkansas MileSplit
The Lovejoy girls are continuing an on going unbelievably year. They won the UIL 5A cross country state championship in December and last weekend they ran impressively in race distances from 400m to the 2 mile run, including the 4x800 relay.
In the latter race, the Lady Leopards won in dominating fashion winning the Texas A&M event by over 15 seconds with their 9:34.20.
This weekend, Lovejoy was right back at it to dominate the 4x800 relay once again. Not only did they improve on last weekend's time, but they set a meet record and put down a nation leading performance.
The winning time of 9:17.94 broke the previous Arkansas Inv. meet record of 9:42.04 by 25 seconds. Using her experience and senior leadership, Katie Armstrong started things off to a fast start with her estimated 2:23 split.
scrub to the 16:20 mark to see girl's 4x800 relay
Armstrong handed off to junior Amy Morefield who not only took the exchange, but took Armstrong's rhythm and capitalized on it. She ran an approximate stick to stick split of 2:15 to expand the Lovejoy lead and lapped most of the teams in the field on her leg alone.
After getting two strong legs from their upperclassmen runners, Lovejoy turned over the second half of the race into the hands of their super sophomore runners, Sara Morefield and Kailey Littlefield.
Already having a huge lead, Morefield continued to press down on the gas pedal turning in a solid 2:25 solo third leg performance before handing off to Littlefield who approximately ran a 2:13 anchor leg split.
Lovejoy leads the national rankings in the 4x800 relay over Cuthbertson High School (NC) who ran 9:18.13 to win the The VA Showcase this weekend.