The kids want to go down and face the best competition in the state and see what we can do. They're not so much interested in sending a message; they just want to go down there and have a season-best performance, and that will serve notice. This is a really good mid-season check to see where we're at.

It just really helps having all those points coming out of the field events. It gives us a little bit of a cushion to start the running events.

It was an outstanding team effort. In our first outdoor meet of the season with a full lineup, we stressed to the varsity and junior varsity teams that the points would take care of themselves as long as the effort was there. It was an outstanding effort.

We're trying to find where kids can help our team and get some confidence. Indoor meets are non-scoring meets, so you can move people around and experiment a bit. You can find out what you really have before you put together your full lineup for the outdoor season.

Up and down the lineup, everybody pitched in. I think this will give us confidence to keep working hard and keep getting better.

Valley's the defending state champion, and we just got in a battle with them tonight and went toe-to-toe. Up and down the lineup, our kids performed. The question now is where we can find five points in the next month before we see Valley again at the conference meet.

We have a good core of kids to build the team around, and that's really encouraging. I've seen these kids work very hard during the indoor season, and now we're going to see what we're about ... It's nice to train but opening day and that first meet is always exciting.

I think she likes the competition of the big meets. She has a great ability to focus, and that rubs off on the other kids. She had some injury problems last year, but she's really worked hard to get herself in good shape for this season.

Our field events are going to be a real positive. They'll get us some points early and we'll start the running events in a good position.

I think that experience will really help. The nice thing about the Drake Relays is you get to go and compete at the state meet venue halfway through the season so it gives you that incentive to get back there (for state). No other high school sport offers that.