Spirit of the Jaguar

Joel ran his last track meet ever!

  (He originally only signed up for high-school track at the urging of his PE coach (who happens to be the track coach.)  The sales pitch was "you need to condition for cross country".  Joel did a full season in 8th grade (before there was school soccer) and ran maybe 2 races as a freshman, one as a sophomore (before Covid shut down), once as a junior (indoors before soccer season started) and 2 as a senior (one indoors).  Yesterday's meet was in town, hosted by Ankeny High School (the south school in town), so Joel skipped soccer practice and raced in the 800 meters.

I bet he was really glad he did!  He got 2nd in his heat (the winner was on his team and ran in the State Cross Country meet). Joel was 7th out of 63 JV runners and just shy of the slowest varsity in all 11 schools.  Pretty good for only training with the track team before soccer practices.

BUT more importantly today won The Spirit of the Jaguar.

80 kids won this year and Joel was one of 8 kids who was nominated by 2 teachers.  Here he is with the other soccer players.  (The team mom (not me) put this picture together.)

Eighty might seem like a pretty big amount of kids for this award, but there are 1307 kids at Joel's school, so I am a proud mom!

The funny thing was I heard one kid say to his mom (after the presentation), "I AM NOT getting a picture."   I thought to myself, "well, you don't have much spirit of the Jaguar then":0)  

Joel knows me well and smiled without a fuss!!

Mrs. Lawler teaches Joel AP Language and Composition  AND Oral Communication (2nd semester only).  So she seems him a bunch.  Good thing he is respectful (her word) or he could drive her crazy as a hoot owl  being in 2 classes in a day.

Mr. Gettemy is Joel's PE teacher and has coached Cross Country since he came to Centennial.  So he really knows Joel well too!