State callback a welcome surprise for Woodhouse
· Yahoo Sports
Logansport’s Alette Woodhouse made big strides her sophomore year in track and cross country and broke school records in both sports.
That has also led her all the way to the IHSAA State Finals for the first time in her career. She will compete in the 1600-meter run at the girls state track meet at North Central High School in Indianapolis on Friday.
Visit mchezo.co.za for more information.
For Woodhouse, it was an unexpected trip to state after she placed seventh at the Lafayette Jeff Regional last week. The top three automatically qualified, so she assumed she was out.
“I would say going into regionals, I had highly anticipated that it would be my last event of the season,” she said. “The callback was nothing I had ever planned. I thought that my main focus at regionals was just to run for myself without the pressure of placing for the state meet. I thought that it was gonna be my last event of the season. I was happy to end the season with a PR (5:13.33) and it was fun running with my teammates and getting to watch Ady (Porter) and Rylee (Zimmerman) compete in the regionals.
“It wasn’t until the next evening, I had just in fact put away my jersey and track spikes, when I got a message from Coach Morrill. He wanted to discuss the regional results with me, and we were going over my split times and my pace and everything when he gave me a phone call and after I’d answered, finally he told me I had qualified. I thought he was kidding of course, and it took a moment for everything to sink in for me. And then qualifying for the state meet was just beyond anything I expected but just as exciting. It’s been really thrilling for me to get to go back to practice and get to experience everything for just one more week.”
Woodhouse had a strong freshman campaign and has taken it to another level her sophomore year. She broke Logansport’s 5K cross country record in the fall. Then this spring she broke the school records in the 800 and 3200 in track.
“I believe throughout the past year I’ve grown more into my running career I believe through confidence and just being more well rounded in character,” she said. “I think that even though I advanced to state as an individual, I certainly haven’t been through everything alone. I think that my team’s encouragement has meant so much to me and I wouldn’t be here without them. I’ve met a lot of great people through distance running and I think that people on the team with character have really helped build who I am as a person. Everyone pushes me to be the best version of myself and I’m really grateful for that.
“I’d also like to thank Coach Morrill so much. I know that a lot of people see the race that I run but they don’t always see the countless hours that go into practice and behind the scenes. And Coach Morrill has always been there for me and he believes in me even when I wasn’t sure I was capable myself. And so I’m thankful for his recognition of my potential and I don’t think I’d be half the runner I am this year without his support.”
It’s probably too early to tell what Woodhouse’s best event will eventually be. She said she enjoys running all the distances, where it be the half-mile, mile or two-mile in track or the 5K in cross country.
She’s glad she’s getting State Finals experience as a sophomore.
“Getting the callback to go to state was such an exciting moment for me,” she said. “I was truly beyond grateful for the privilege to get to go to the State Finals. I know that it’s not something everyone gets to do, so I’m hoping just to be able to go and enjoy the moment. And I still believe I have a lot left in my running career, so I hope to just take it as a learning experience and just enjoy the moment and take everything in and just have a little bit of fun. So I hope to compete the best I can and run a race I’m proud of to end the season and just represent us as only a small portion of the success that I think our Logansport track team has had this season.”
The 1600 run gets underway at 6:35 p.m.