On the virtual eve of Christmas, our 15 relay teams, their coach and parents had a taste of the upside and downside of the festive season with a few exceptionally happy faces and some distraught ones as well. This year we added an extra training day, so it proved a very long build up to the state relay titles. For some of our teams it was too long, for others like our Under 9 Boys it was the ideal length, allowing them to overcome their inexperience and sloppy baton changes and to be cherry ripe on the day.

The state titles is an incredibly hard competition and only 19 of around 80 competing centres won gold medals. We were lucky enough to win two gold, one silver and  one bronze which placed us 10^th overall on the medal tally. Superpower Knox won 16 golds, Keilor eight and Diamond Valley six. Whittlesea (5) and Bacchus Marsh (3) were the two big improvers, while Box Hill, Doncaster and Geelong had dirty days by their standards.

We started the day with team manager and coach Chris Muirden predicting up to seven medals from our 15 teams and it quickly became a roller coaster ride. Our Under 9-12 MIxed Age medley (the awesome foursome) included four superstars and to be honest was never going to be beaten. When Harrison got the baton 10m clear, thanks to the efforts of Ed Mich, James and Henry, he simply cruised. They broke the state record for this event by two seconds and if Harrison hadn't been conserving it might have been double that. A little later our Under 12 boys won bronze in the medley but were surprised a bit by how strong the Knox and Doncaster teams were and Harrison was never going to be able to reel them in and conserved early.

The heats of the 4x200m was the start of the day for most of our teams and it began brilliantly with heat wins from our Under 9 boys, girls, under 10 girls and under 11 boys. From that high we then hit a huge low when a dropped baton denied our Under 12 boys a shot at Doncaster. That grief was replicated in the U9 4x200m mixed sex, a huge medal chance, was disqualified for an illegal first change in the final.

Fortunately our Under 11 Mixed Sex team came out firing with Fraser Nott in sensational 28-second form to claim silver, although  we were pipped for gold right on the line by just one hundredth of a second by a boy from Ballarat, who came from the clouds.

Then came our under 9 boys, who had copped it for a month from the coach, for their performance at regionals where they ran 2:27, came into the meet ranked ninth fastest. But Lachlan, the two Eds and Matthew turned on a show and got everything right in the final running 2:17 to claim gold and make Brad a very happy additional gold medallist.

The next event was the under 9 girls, who came into the meet ranked number one after a sensational regionals in 2:21. But this time it never really clicked for them and fourth in 2:24 was a sad end to what promised to be great day for our girls. Our under 10 boys were not far back but seventh was all they could manage and our under 10 girls could not match their sensational heat form to finish fifth. Our under 11 boys also faded and finished fifth, although an uncaring official later disqualified them for a minor infringement that had no impact at the last change.  Our under 11 girls were eighth, but really just making the final was a huge effort for them and they can be proud of their heat time of 2:12.

So bring on next year - another year older, another year wiser and hopefully for a few of our teams a chance for redemption. For Rosie, it will be her last chance at a medal after six years of trying - as I said it ain't easy when you are battling centres with twice as many kids to choose from. But I know there are a few under 8 boys and girls very eager for their day in the sun.

Finally a big thank you to Lisa Lighfoot, Mark Ladbrook, Paul Marr and Barry Field for assisting with our relay program in 2007.

It's been a lot of work and a lot of fun.