Thirteen of GDS’ varsity spring track runners competed at the 2024 Penn Relays Carnival in Philadelphia from Thursday, April 25 to Saturday, April 27.
The Penn Relay Carnival, commonly known as Penn Relays, is one of the most competitive meets in the track world. It is the world’s longest-running and most widely recognized annual relay meet. The runners range from middle schoolers to professionals. The meet is internationally recognized, and this year, teams from the Caribbean and Canada competed.
The girls’ high school prep school 4×100 took place on Thursday. Freshman Ava Comly, sophomore Alexandra Solomon, and juniors Seva Rustgi and Sloane Holder ran in the race. They finished third of the nine teams in their heat and 69th of 122 schools altogether. They set a season record of 52.27 seconds, beating the time the girls’ team ran last year at Penn Relays.
The girls’ 4×400 took place on Thursday. Comly, Holder, Solomon and junior Naomi Borek ran in the race. The girls finished 12th of 17 schools with a time of 4:20.16, beating the time the girls’ team ran last year by six seconds. The heat included Georgetown Visitation and St. Stephens & St. Agnes, both teams GDS competes against during the regular season.
Head coach Anthony Belber said that both girls teams “performed exceptionally well.”
“I thought it was going to be really hard and super exhausting, but honestly, the energy just kind of carried me through it,” Comly said. “There was so much excitement that it was a lot less hard than I thought.”
On Friday, seniors Kovan Smith, Nathaniel Mintzer, Nathaniel Romine and William Babcock competed in the high school boys’ 4×100 race. They came in second of the nine teams in their heat and 31st of 99 teams altogether. They had a time of 43.59 seconds, which is the second-fastest time in school history.
To close out Penn Relays was the boys’ prep school 4×400. Seniors Abe Badji, Nico Greene, Thomas Ogada and Smith competed in the race. Last year, the boys’ team won their heat and won the coveted wheel in this event. This year, they placed seventh in their heat with a time of 3:30:37, only a second slower than the boys’ team’s time last year.
Ogada said he did not know what to expect going in because it was his first time running in Penn Relays, but his teammates told him to “just go out there, enjoy the experience, and just see what you can do.” He said, “we wanted to do better overall, but we still did really well.”
“It’s not so much about what you do when you’re there; it’s about the experience of being there and the confidence that you bring back with you to race in the final championship races,” Belber said. “Once you have been performing on that stage, you feel ready to tackle the smaller stage that is our conference championships.”
The track team’s next meet will be the Independent School League and Mid-Atlantic Athletic Conference B Championships on Tuesday, May 7 at Episcopal High School.