A Tweet That Aged Well

Ben Thompson

First of all, to all the senior, congratulations on graduating. We want to hear from you one last time. Email wboling@milesplit.com if YOU want to be featured in our Senior Sendoff Series!

Over the last couple of weeks, we've spent a lot of time showcasing Tennessee's most accomplished and awarded athletes and rightfully so. With national caliber performers like Josh Sobota, Rebecca Story, and Willington Wright in our state its only appropriate that we celebrate and admire their accomplishments. This is not one of those stories however but as coaches, aspiring athletes, or fans of the sport one that you can hopefully appreciate.

Before I began contributing for Tennessee Milesplit, I coached Track and Field at Beech High School for 7 years under Head Coach Brice Askren. On my twitter account, I wouldn't tweet about any and every runner that crossed the finish line but if there was something of note, school record, team championship, state qualifier, etc... I wouldn't hesitate give recognition to those athletes that accomplished great things. In May of 2015 though, the morning after the Section 3 North Subsectional, I found myself drafting a tweet to recognize a last place finish. 

Boys 4x200 Meter Relay
==========================================================================
    School                                               Finals  H# Points
==========================================================================
  1 Kenwood High School  'A'                            1:30.58   2  10   
  2 West Creek High School  'A'                         1:30.60   2   8   
  3 Clarksville High School  'A'                        1:30.99   1   6   
  4 Gallatin High School  'A'                           1:32.13   2   5   
  5 Rossview High School  'A'                           1:32.19   2   4   
  6 Northeast High School  'A'                          1:33.22   2   3   
  7 Beech Senior High School  'A'                       1:35.78   1   2

This was not the 'A' team. They weren't even the 'B' team. They weren't in the top 3 in any event for the squad so there were several meets over the course of the season that the team attended that these runners did not. Every coach with a large team can relate. Regardless of whether or not they had an event to run each week, they were there every day, they ran every rep, and when the half-committed football players chose spring practice over state qualifying, they were left.


Austin Mullen, Jackson Helton, and Koby Story were the 3 freshman mentioned in the tweet.