It was unusually difficult for Palisadian Cami Chapus to describe her feelings after her Harvard-Westlake team won two events at the New Balance Nationals in Greensboro, North Carolina last weekend. ’I lost my voice on Friday and on Saturday, I literally couldn’t talk,’ she said. ‘It didn’t matter with the races, though.’ No kidding. First, Chapus helped the Wolverines win the 1600 meter sprint relay, then joined forces with Amy Weissenbach, K.C. Cord and Lauren Hansson to win the distance medley relay; the team’s blazing time of 11:22.23 broke the national record by almost ten seconds. This victory was even sweeter given that it included the same Harvard-Westlake foursome that ran the 4 x 400 together at the CIF State Track and Field Championships in Clovis earlier this month. There, the Wolverines mounted a late comeback to win the event, but were disqualified 20 minutes later because of a questionable lane-violation decision. ’It was devastating,’ said Chapus, who also won the 1600 at the state finals this year as a junior. ‘Everyone was so depressed; I couldn’t be happy for myself, because our seniors looked like something had died.’ But from that DQ came more motivation to go out on top at last weekend’s Nationals. And even more motivation came from the nationals themselves, when the team noticed that they were not the favorites to win in the distance relay medley; instead, the meet’s program favored the team from Fayetteville-Manlius in New York, predicting they would win and run an 11:25 to break the national record. The New York team ran that national-record breaking time. Harvard-Westlake simply ran faster. ’Seeing them favored really made us angry,’ Chapus said. ‘We had a team meeting the night before, and we all knew this was the last relay with this team, our same team from state. And we went in wanting to go out with a bang and get revenge. ’With K.C. and Lauren graduating, it was great to win, but even better to crush the national record.’ Things won’t be slowing down for Chapus anytime soon. Today, she heads for Eugene, Oregon to compete in the Nike U.S. Track Nationals this weekend. Then, she’ll fly back across the country to Myrtle Beach, South Carolina for the U.S. Qualifiers for the World Youth Track and Field Finals on June 28 and 29. If Chapus is among the American qualifiers in the 1500 meters (the top two finishers are guaranteed a spot), she’ll then head straight from South Carolina to Lille, France for the World Youth Championships, July 6 to 10. So, instead of running in this year’s Palisades-Will Rogers 5K (which she mentioned she normally does), Chapus could be in France to celebrate the Fourth of July. Truly a result that could be too good for words.
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