Morgan Scott, left, and her cousin Sophie Glick and sister Taylor Scott are three-fourths of Columbus East’s regional-qualifying 4x400-meter relay team.
Submitted photo
In her first two years of high school, Taylor Scott established herself as the top sprinter on Columbus East’s girls track team.
This year, Scott’s younger sister Morgan and cousin Sophie Glick have joined her on the Olympians as freshmen this season, and they’ve combined to make up three-fourths of East’s 4×400-meter relay team that has qualified for Tuesday’s Franklin Regional.
“I ran the 4×400 my freshman and sophomore year, and I knew Sophie was good in the 400, so I thought maybe that would happen,” Taylor said.
Taylor, a junior, also has qualified for regional for the third year in a row in the 100 and 4×100 relay. Morgan also has made it as part of the Olympians 4×800 relay team.
The 4×400 team’s other member, senior Emma Gray, is there in four events, including the 100 hurdles, 300 hurdles and 4×100 relay. Glick is the only 400 specialist among the group, and she narrowly missed qualifying for regional in that event.
“I’m not running the 400 this time, so I’ll be fresh for that (4×400),” Glick said.
Glick leads off the 4×400 and is followed by Morgan Scott, Gray and Taylor Scott.
“Sophie is our open 400 runner, and that’s why we start her,” East coach Glen Brown said. “She gets us anything from a 1:02 to a 1:03 start, which is a pretty good start, and then the rest of them, they get a running start, and they can get pretty good times. Our time has really been dropping all year. They’ve really been working hard, and we finally found the combination.”
The quartet ran 4 minutes, 17.06 seconds in Tuesday’s Franklin Sectional, which was less than a second off their season-best that they ran the previous week in the Hoosier Hills Conference meet.
“All of us have ran the 400, but all year, the 4×400 team has been different,” Morgan said. “But the last three or four meets, we’ve all run the 4×400, and our handoffs are good, and our encouraging each other and pushing each other is good. We all want to be good. We don’t want to be the weak link.”
Columbus East’s Taylor Scott, right, competes in the 100 meters in the Columbus North Invitational Saturday April 7, 2023.
The Republic file photo
The Scotts and Glick grew up playing soccer together and all are playing for East and are involved in spring soccer. Morgan and Glick ran track together last year at Northside Middle School before joining Taylor at East.
“I think it’s fun,” Glick said. “We get to see each other every day.”
“I’m excited that we’re all running together,” Morgan added. “I think it’s a surprise that we’re freshmen going to regional, but I also think we work hard.”
The Olympians are seeded 12th in the regional in the 4×400. Only the top three in each event earn automatic berths to the state finals, but after that, the next-best three times from around the state earn call-backs.
“If we’re lucky, there might be a call-back to the state, but we’ll have to drop a few more seconds, and we’ve talked about that already,” Brown said. “The time we have is good, but if we’re going to do any thing more, we have to drop a little bit more. I figure we have to be around 4:10 or better before we can get in there. We’re hoping that they all around 1:01 to 1:04, and that’s where they’ve all been averaging for the last couple weeks.”
“We’re hoping to (set personal records) and hopefully make it to state,” Taylor added. “I’m hoping our 4×100 team gets to 50 seconds and maybe goes to state in that, as well.”
