GRAND RAPIDS, Mich. — Tone Up! Elite Track Club is coming back from the Junior Olympics with a whole lot of medals.
The club recently returned from the AAU Junior Olympics, the largest multi-sport event for youth in the United States.
Five of the club's athletes received medals and earned All-American status.
"I always come home with medals," said Eris Young, 12. Young took her medals in the 100m dash (8th place), 200m dash (6th) and the 4x100 relay (5th).
Young was the second leg for a relay team that finished with a personal best of 51.20 seconds.
The first and third legs are Kylee Patton-Ivy and her sister Alana respectively.
"It feels amazing. I feel loved. I feel supported," said Alana. "I'm just [going to] come back...do better, get faster, and...be better."
"I set my blocks, calm down a little bit, but my heart's still racing," Kylee said. "When they say, take your mark, get set, go, I just run and I calm down."
In a division that was 11-12-year-old girls, Kylee, at 10, was the one of, if not, the youngest competitor in the field, and had to lead off the race for Tone Up!
"I was pretty nervous because it was all on me," Kylee said. "I just had to go."
"It felt good because it was a lot of competition and all them girls was older than me."
Like any relay, each leg has to hold its weight down. And the Tone Up! squad did exactly that.
"[Kylee's] younger so, they obviously gonna get close to her," said Young. "So when she gave me that stick, I gotta run. I gotta get us a better place...before I give it to the next person.
"Everybody did good," said Alia Diamond, who anchored the relay. "Usually, when I see my third leg coming and she's coming fast, that we went in."
Raquel Walker, in her first year competing in AAU track, took home a medal after finishing sixth in the long jump.
"I just take deep breaths, take my time and talk to myself," Walker said. "Then when I'm ready, I just go."