out for taking notes and videos He also brought a stopwatch Practice has already started The first thing Mac sees is a group of girls lining up for the 100-meter hurdles He positions himself in front of the stands to watch their race Mac recognizes one of the sprinters Eighth grader Cecilia Cooks or CC for short is one of Coyote Canyon Middle School’s shining track stars She finished fifth in the 100 meter hurdles at last year’s championship meet and could go all the way this year CLICK Mac presses his stopwatch as soon as one of the assistant coaches yells Go Six sprinters take off quickly finding their stride Two take the lead One of them is CC But Mac’s attention falls on a different runner a tall lanky girl who is on CC’s heals Her dark hair is tied in a braid that bobs against her
neck as she sprints toward the first hurdle Mac is sure he hasn’t seen her before so she must be new to the team Possibly even new to the school He is surprised that she is keeping pace The girls hit the first hurdle They are up and over hardly breaking stride Mac counts their steps as they race One Two Three Four Hurdle
Again One Two Three Four Hurdle Their footwork is timed like clockwork One Two Three Four Hurdle With each leap CC widens her lead She’s not necessarily faster than the new girl she’s just more efficient over the hurdles CC goes up and over her feet quickly back on the ground But the new girl floats in the air a little too long She loses precious time instead of getting her feet back on the track and pumping forward Off to the side Mac sees Coach Johnson watching the race Mac knows that Coach will notice the same thing in the new sprinter and will work with her to fix the technical errors in her form When that is ironed out she will be tough to beat She could be a future star of the track team exactly the type of athlete Mac wants to feature in his blog Someone his readers do not know about yet
Mac does not click his stopwatch when CC crosses the finish line He remembers her best time from last year She hit 18 97 seconds at the SoCal Championship meet last year She will need to break 18 0 if she hopes to take first this year Instead Mac waits for the new girl to cross CLICK 20 24 That’s more than a second behind CC But that time would have still placed her in the top ten at last year’s championship meet And this is just tryouts She will get faster as the track season progresses and her technique improves The other runners finish a second or more behind the new runner As the assistant coach gets a group of boys lined up for the next race Mac wheels himself over to Coach Johnson Hey Coach Mac says
