The Emmaus girls 3200-meter relay team set a number of goals before the 2016 season.

The group of Sophie Pickering, Abby Dalton, Katrina Durrwachter and Katie Bacher accomplished two of those goals in the same meet. The foursome set a new school record in the 3200 relay event, running a 9:18.77 at the PIAA Track and Field Championships for an eighth-place finish and a spot on the medal stand.

“Coming into this season, pretty much any goal we could have wanted to accomplish we pretty much took care of-school record, state medal,” Durrwachter said. “We’re really happy overall.”

The Hornets were in medal contention when Pickering, the third leg of the relay, received the baton from Dalton. Her mindset was “Don’t lose it for the team,” she said after the race.

She didn’t just hold the team’s place, Pickering led the Hornets into great position with Katie Bacher set to anchor the group for the final 800 meters.

With her drive to capture that elusive state medal that has evaded her for so many years, Bacher was able to push the Hornets into eighth and just .40 seconds behind Owen J. Roberts in seventh.

“I’ve wanted a state medal for as long as I’ve been coming here,” Bacher said. “It was my goal at the beginning of the season, and it would be really nice to walk away with a state medal.”

The Hornets ran a 9:20.07 in the prelims, the third-fastest time of the 12 teams that qualified for finals.

“We knew we had a shot at a medal,” Bacher said. “There are a lot of teams really close to us around five through 10 that were really close.”

The District 11 Meet was a two-team race between Emmaus and Liberty. The Hurricanes topped the Hornets by less than two seconds for gold just over a week prior to states. And at leagues, Easton had a slightly better time than Emmaus for gold.

The Hornets some revenge by edging the Hurricanes by over three seconds at states.

“At leagues I feel like it was the first time that we had all come together,” Durrwachter said. “Even though leagues wasn’t our best race as a team, it was like, ‘Oh, OK. We see what we can do.’”

States turned out to be a completely different animal for the Hornet foursome, which contains two sophomores and a junior. The lone senior is Bacher.

“We weren’t even sure what we could do,” Dalton said. “But once we all came together and worked so hard, it all came together and we were able to pull through.”

The Hornet boys’ 4x800 relay team also qualified for states. Ryan Paradise, Greg Jaindl, Jake Feiertag and Kyle Kleinber placed eighth in their heat with a time of 8:05.82. That time placed them 16th out of the 26 competing teams in prelims, leaving them just short of the finals.

“We definitely wanted a faster time,” Paradise said. “We wanted to qualify for finals, and we knew to be able to do that you have to run 8:00 flat or 8:01, which is what we wanted to run because that’s our school record as well. We came up a little short of that.”