A writing teacher once told me that a great way to begin a news article is with a short anecdote to catch the reader’s attention. Well, that’s taken care of.
Let’s talk about track and field. Track and field is an obscure sport practice by obscure people. For example, do you know Christopher Wong? Probably not. He’s pretty short. And yet, he does track and field. The universe is full of mysteries.

But the thing about a meet like Rossi, where the focus of the day is relays, is that no one athlete, not even Christopher Wong, a freshman from The College Preparatory School in Berkeley, California, who lives in Page house and has very short hair, stands out. It’s about the whole team.

Here is the basic idea of what you do in a relay race. First, you need a speedsuit. A speedsuit is a thin, elastic garment designed to accentuate your sleekness.

Next, you need a baton. This is a just a hollow metal stick. If you are feeling mischievous you can fill it with little candies and just before you hand off, yell “Pinata time!” and shake the baton so tootsie rolls and starburst scatter all over the track. This is a diversionary tactic intended to get the other runners to stop and pick them up. Also, it is generally accepted that a banana is a reasonable substitute for a baton.

Finally, you must actually run the relay. This is really the only part left, and once Caltech gets this minor detail taken care of, we’ll be up there with USC.
Matt Kiesz ran an enormous lead-off leg to get the men well-placed in the Distance Medley. Wong then alit with baton in tow, his glorious stride shooting beams of golden wonder out at all who were blessed enough to behold him. He handed of to some guy named Anton, who ran 800 and passed the stick to Julian Panetta. The men successfully defeated Oxy by negative a minute, by which I mean they actually got second-to-last.

The women proved twice as foolish, punishing themselves with two teams. I would tell you who they all were, but honestly females all look the same to me. There was some redeeming merit to the strategy of fielding two squads, though, they can’t both get last.

In the sprint medley, Caltech women came in 10th of 12, defeating Oxy and the Running Oaks Retirement Home. Elette Boyle, Tencia Lee, Bettina Chen, and Becky Sholtz are the ones who made the magic.

The men’s sprint medley finished 11th, which, considering the world population is about 6.5 billion, is pretty good.

Nnoduka Eruchaln, Alan Pezeshki, and Tom Rose ran the 100m. That’s 100m each, although they’d have made it a relay if we let them. Eruchaln led the way with a 12.35 performance.

The guy named Anton returned later to run 9:22 for the 3000m, which will place him on the Caltech All-Time Top Ten List at No. 10. Alex Lapides, already #3 on the same list for high jump, cleared 6 feet despite rainy conditions. Just think about that for a moment. It involves jumping over a bar over your head, in Earth gravity, without any artificial aids.

In any meet the headline event is the 4x400. Caltech women ran 4:43 and the men 3:36.