My First Away Meet

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Friday January 23 was my very first away track and field meet of my collegiate career. We were told the previous night that the bus left at 8 a.m. in the morning and pole vaulters needed to be there by 7:30 a.m. to load poles! I set my alarm for 6:20 a.m., packed my stuff, and made sure to go to bed early the night before. Once Friday morning came, I was wide awake and ready to go. I started the morning by putting my uniform on and doing my hair. Once that was done, I made myself breakfast before walking over to Kinghorn in the negative degrees. When I got there, the pole vault poles were already loaded so I just had to worry about getting a good seat on the bus. We traveled over two hours to Hillsdale College in Michigan where we began the start of a fourteen-hour day.

When I got to the meet, I had to immediately start warming up because the sixty-meter hurdles were first. Once my teammates and I warmed up and did drills, it was race time! In prelims I beat my personal record from my first meet and squeaked my way into finals! I had a little less than an hour to get some food in my body before having to warm up all over again for finals. In finals I set a new personal record for myself but was 0.03 seconds off the freshman record so I was a little disappointed. I was seeded 14th overall coming into the meet and ended with a fifth-place finish. Overall, I will take two personal records in an event where technique is everything and beating your best time is hard to do.


Now came the worst part of the day, waiting three hours until pole vault started. During this time, I cheered on my teammates, was able to eat some more food, and even finished some homework. After hours of waiting, I got my legs warmed back up and they announced pole vault would start runway warmups. We got one hour on the runway to be able to take warmup jumps before the competition began. I had cleared my opening height, and the next bar, but was unsuccessful in clearing the third height I was going for. The height I cleared was at least the same as the previous meet, so I was not too upset. I did have one of my best jumps in those attempts. In the end, I got fourth place. Everyone else on the team went home on the charter buses while the pole vaulters waited for competition to finish, leaving forty minutes later. By the time we got back, it was around 10 p.m. Overall, I had a really good day of competition for as long as it was and cannot wait to improve more next week at our home meet!

 



Comments

  1. Paige BashawatyJanuary 28, 2026 at 10:19 PM

    Congratulations, Danika, on your first meet! That's an amazing accomplishment, and even more congratulations on hitting a PR, even if it wasn't as good as you wanted. That's still a really good accomplishment that you should be proud of. I hope the rest of your season goes well and I can't wait to hear more about it.

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  2. Aubrey HatteryJanuary 29, 2026 at 8:24 AM

    That is so exciting! Congratulations on your first away track meet and getting some new PRs so early in the season! I can't imagine getting up so early to spend fourteen hours at a track meet. That sounds like such a long day, I don't think I would even want to run after sitting for three hours let alone hit some PRs. Another congrats for being in the top ten for ONU in the hurdles!

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