The 4x400 team with winning medals and plaque - Emily, Catherine, Taryn, Taylor. The Garden City girls track team left town at 5:30 in the morning last Thursday to compete at the prestigious 115th Penn Relays at Franklin Field on the campus of the University of Pennsylvania. The atmosphere at the meet is electric with both high school and college runners competing. The Carnival attracts more than 20,000 runners from over 60 countries - more participants than the Olympics!

The first race that our girls were in was the second of four heats of the 4x800 high school division. With 70 teams competing for one of 12 spots in the Championship race on Friday, the GC foursome of Jenna DeAngelo, Liz Slattery, Michelle Rotondo and Emily Menges jumped out of the bus and finished third in their heat and fifth overall, qualifying for the Championships of America. Finishing in the top 4 positions were 3 amazing teams from Jamaica and one from NJ.

Next up was the 4x400 team of Taylor Hennig, Taryn Schmelzinger, Catherine Cafaro and Emily Menges and they ran a tremendous race just barely missing out on the finals with a time of 3:56.98, winning their heat and bringing home a team plaque for finishing first.

Top American 4x800 team - Liz, Emily, Michelle and Jenna After a relaxing evening of watching college races and getting dinner at the Cheesecake Factory, the girls came back wide awake and ready to run on Friday afternoon in the 4x800 Championships of America race. With Jenna in the leadoff position running a personal best 2:21.4, and Liz producing a solid 2:22.1 the girls were running according to Coach Cuzzo's plan, holding strong with the second pack in about 9th place. Next up it was Michelle breaking out of the pack and working her way up in 2:18.0 and giving the baton to Emily in 6th place, a couple of strides out of 5th. Emily took off and quickly set her sights on the girls in front of her, passing the first one from Bayshore rather quickly and zeroing in on the anchor for Columbia, NJ. She caught and passed her with about 200 meters left and sprinted to a fourth place finish with a blistering time of 2:10.0. The team set a new school record with a sparkling time of 9:11.9 - and the current US # 2 for the season. Oh, they also earned themselves a set of gold Penn Relays watches for being the first American team across the finish line. In the words of Emily, 'that's sick.'

Michelle pushes towards the lead pack on the 3rd leg.

Jenna jumps out fast on the opening leg. Liz runs a strong second leg. Emily runs a blistering 2:10 anchor leg.