Texas Relays win a special moment for Edmond Memorial track team
EDMOND — Jed Helker and Matt O’Connor arrived at the track about 3 p.m. last Friday, more than six hours before they were scheduled to run in the distance medley relay at the nationally renowned Texas Relays high school track meet in Austin.
Six hours later, after a series of weather delays, the Edmond Memorial runners still had another four hours to wait before they’d get on the track.
“I started drinking coffee about 8 p.m. because I knew I’d need to stay awake,” O’Connor said. “We warmed put probably 10 different times, because we weren’t sure when we’d run.”
When they finally did —
Scott Wright
joined by Zach Mauck and Josh Minor on the relay team — they won.
The Edmond Memorial team was in second most of the race, which began with Helker running 1,200 meters, followed by Minor running 400 and O’Connor running 800. Mauck closed with a 1,600-meter run, taking the baton in second place and pulling into the front for the win.
Overjoyed and exhausted, the runners posed for a championship photo in front of the stadium clock, which didn’t display their winning time, but the time of night — 1:22 a.m.
“It was so late,” Mauck said with a laugh. “We didn’t know what to expect. We haven’t all been pushed like that this season. Texas has so much good competition, we weren’t really thinking about winning.
“But once we saw we had a shot to win, we just went for it.”
After the rain moved through and the sun went down, the conditions were ideal for running, except for it being 1 a.m.
“I think that kind of helped us for some reason,” Helker said. “We had the energy for some reason, and we felt good. We were ready to run.”
All four runners either matched or broke their personal best marks in their respective events.
Helker and O’Connor had races to run the next day, but getting to sleep wasn’t easy after such a big win.
When they returned to their hotel, where three of them were rooming with another runner, who had already been asleep for hours by the time they showed up.
“We woke him up as soon as we got in there,” O’Connor said. “I don’t think he was too happy about that, but he was happy we won. We probably didn’t get to sleep until 3:30 or 4, and we had to get up at about 9 the next morning.”
Edmond Memorial qualified 11 runners for the Texas Relays and had three top-seven finishes, making for an overall successful trip to the prestigious event.
“It was really exciting to see us perform like that, because we haven’t had competition like that in our other meets that forced us to push ourselves as hard as we can,” Minor said. “Going down there and running the way we did, it shows the hope that we have for the rest of the season and it’s really exciting to see.”