High School Girls Relay Team Ditches Baton For High Jump Bar, Still Kicks Butt

Looking to celebrate their Senior Night and the end of four years of conditioning drills and competition days, Fairfax (Virginia) High School’s B-heat relay team made a last-minute decision this past Wednesday to swap out the 4x100’s usual baton for something a bit more challenging.

So they ditched the customary prop, grabbed a high jump bar and headed to the outside lane, hoping to pull off the trick without tripping up the track's other teams.

A high jump bar. You know, that roughly four-meter-long rod that’s about a dozen times as long as a relay baton.

The runners had never practiced with the bar before and had no expectations of notching the win. But thanks to a Herculean come-from-behind effort from anchor Erin Hopkins, the team danced across the finish line first, pole in hand, victory tallied.

“The whole time I was running, I was just like, ‘This is really, really fun,'” Te’Ona Witherspoon, who took on the first leg, told LetsRun. “I love my teammates. Everybody who was on the 4×1 team, we’re all really, really close. It was just fun. [I haven’t heard any] negative feedback.”

We’re all for this one. Way to make sports fun again, Fairfax track and field team. One Senior Night at a time.