This weekend, a few of Allen County's track and field athletes competed at the 79th Annual KU relays. Freshman distance specialist Michael Valenti got things started with the 5000m which was ran on Thursday during the distance carnival. "I was very impressed with Michael and the way he stepped up to the occasion." "Michael was kind of in a funk, running wise, his practices were extremely good, and he just wasn't able to put together that race." Well Thursday, Michael set an all-time personal best of 16:04.81. "I have never seen Michael look as strong as he did in the middle of that race." "Michael started well in the back of the pack and just worked his way up; he knew that all of the other runners were going to come back." Michael's goal is to break 16 and hopefully catch a great day and qualify for Nationals. "I believe he could quite possibly do that this weekend at the Southwestern Relays." Other athletes that competed at KU Relays were the 4x100m and 4x400 teams. The teams consisted of Chase Bradley, Lee Johnson, Andrew Schroter, Harry Jenkins, and Daniel Colina. The 4x100m relay kind of broke down mentally. They were ready to run fast, they just did not prepare themselves correctly. They did not spend enough time warming up and getting themselves ready to run fast. I have no doubt in my mind they can hit the qualifying mark. We switched up some legs of the relay in hope for a better result and things didn't work out like we wanted them to so we'll stay with the original legs. All three of the handoffs were bad which costs valuable seconds. The 4x100m ended up running 42.45 which placed them 12th out of 22 teams. The 4x400m had the opposite problem. The meet started to run behind, so they ended up warming up for about a 1hr and 45mins. Their time was 3:24.88. I believe both relay teams will compete better this week at Southwestern Relays. Phillip was the last athlete to compete, he jumped on Saturday. Phillip didn't have the day he wanted, he was only able to mark 2 jumps with the furthest being 21'6" which was way off his personal best mark. "I've seen what Phil can do and I know he is capable of jumping consistently in the 23's. Also competing at the KU Relays was Coach Vince DeGrado and his Unattached-Allen County 4x880yard Relay placed 2nd with a 7:44.36 losing by only a second to the 1st place team. The team consisted of Andrae Harper, Vince's former teammate at Southwestern, Bobby Reyes, running buddy from Butler County, and Dale Dexter, Vince's high school teammate who is training for the Olympic Trials, trying to hit the standard in the Marathon. "I had fun competing again on that stage, the only difference is I didn't have to worry about qualifying for anything, I could just go out and run." "Being able to run with those guys was pure joy, we were able to just go out and run and now worry about what a coach thought of our performance."