A Dashing and Victorious Debut

By Elizabeth LaBan

Last year they were spectators; this year they are winners.

In front of up to 40,000 people at the Penn Relays held last week at Franklin Field on the University of Pennsylvania campus, four members of the TPS track and field team ran the 4X100 meter relay race against five other independent and charter schools.

Watch the race!

Working together, seventh-grader Samir Taylor and eighth-graders Javi Flores, Sam Valerio-Sacks, and Jaquay Scott came in first. Their final time was 50.3 seconds. That was 1.6 seconds ahead of the second place team.

“It was cathartic and exhilarating,” said Meg Waldron, the team’s coach, who watched the race in the stands with the rest of the team. “They just nailed it.”

Head of School Amy Vorenberg agreed. “They were a streak,” she said. “I mean whoosh!”

After the news broke, Lois West, a TPS staffer, said an announcement was made over the school’s loudspeaker. “The whole school erupted in cheers,” she said. “The scream said it all.”

Jaquay said the first thing he felt after the race was relief. “And then I felt proud,” he said. “I remember watching last year and I wanted to run and we were finally here.”

It was the first time TPS has had the opportunity to participate in the country’s oldest relay track meet.
“This is the first year it opened up to independent and charter schools,” said Meg. “I thought I had such a good team this year, let me see if I can get them into it.”

Meg took the four boys to a qualifying meet in the Northeast last week where they competed against 11 other teams. Sam, now in his third year on the track team, said it was a bit unnerving since the team had not even competed yet this season.

“We tried to get pumped up,” he said. And pumped up they got.

“I was shocked when I stopped my watch and saw 50 seconds,” said Meg. The TPS boys came in first with the second team coming in three seconds behind them – in a race, that is a long time, Meg said.
“I think this whole thing was predestined,” Jaquay said. “We were going to make it.”

And the excitement was just beginning. Meg took the boys to meet and train with a three-time Olympic athlete, Edwin Roberts, who competed in the 1964, 1968 and 1972 Olympic Games. He went to college in the United Stated but competed in the Olympics for his native country Trinidad and Tobago. He now lives in Jenkintown and coaches at Northeast High School. During their first meeting, after showing the students his bronze medals and scrapbooks, he took them out to the track and taught them a new way to pass the baton: the Olympic way.

“It’s more scientific,” said Javi. Not as much is left to chance.

“More like a machine,” Meg added.

Interestingly enough, Edwin also taught them something they’d been singing about at TPS for years now. He asked them over and over, “Practice makes what?” The obvious answer was perfect, they said. But that wasn’t the answer the bronze-medal winner wanted. In his eyes practice makes you better, because, he told them, if they were perfect they wouldn’t have to practice at all.

Meg knows a thing or two about what a day like this will mean to the boys. In 1983 she ran the 4X800 meter race at the Penn Relays for her Bernards High School team, setting a record. As has been the case for her, she knows the boys will remember this day forever.

“They blew it away,” she said.

On Wednesday, April 28, Meg and her team were each presented with an official proclamation from Governor Rendell, who congratulated them for embodying "a commitment to athletic and personal excellence" and for proving "the value of hard work, determination, and good sportsmanship."