What a way to close out the season yesterday and athletics for anyone at St. Christopher's as we were the final team in action for the 2024-2025 school year.  Although we went into this meet with some hesitancy as this was the first ever middle school track and field state championship meet, Coach Dunn and I were overall pretty pleased with the event.  We do have some feedback for the meet directors so if you all have any feedback, please let me know.  They are likely more susceptible to adjustments after the first year or two of the meet.

 

Thank you to all the parents and family who came out to support the team.  That was great to see.  A special thanks to the Sextons as well as they bought us a tent, brought a bunch of community food, and even helped clean up the team area after the meet.

 

Getting into the meet, the cool start was certainly welcome, especially since a few of us ended up spending close to 12 hours at the meet from 8:00am to almost 8:00pm.  This is by no means a complaint on my part as there was excitement from the first event all the way to the final event for our team.  This meet was a tough ask on many different levels.  It was going to be a long day, a delay in Memorial Day plans for families, and for some of our 8s, a meet with minimal practices leading into it.  I knew earning personal bests would be a challenge, but we did have 7 (8 if you include Corbett's 300 Hurdles which were done at a height no one has ever done them at), including 3 in the same relay.  As much as it goes against my focus on personal bests, most would argue that times are thrown out at a state meet and you just go for the best finish place possible.  One of the reasons I shared all of that seeding information before the meet, was to promote the idea that our team could do well and I even had some thoughts that we could win the whole thing.  But, as I told the boys, the seedings are just paperwork.  We have to run the meet and see what happens.

 

Although we only brought 10 athletes to the meet, we were asking a lot of most of them as half our 10 tripled while Alexander Koussoglou did the quad, which included all 3 relays along with the 200.  He had the longest day of arguably any athlete in the meet, running the first event (4x800) and the final heat of the final event (4x400).  Two of the triples came from Langdon Sexton and Charlie Branch who each ran 3 1/2 miles worth of races on Saturday.  Along with these tough racing schedules, Elex Churchwell was also in a trio of events after having just gotten out of a 3-week stint in a boot just 2 days before the state meet.  So, as stated we were asking a lot of the boys, and to their credit, they delivered!  With 13 individual elite performances, all 3 relays earning elite performance status, and a new school record to go with three other board updates (top 3 or better all-time), I will once again reiterate...the boys delivered!

 

I had a hunch the relays would be strong events for us, knowing the number of clubs and unattached athletes in individual events would be much more of a challenge.  That being said, we loaded up each relay as much as we could, with our 4x800 relay team being the first event on the track.  Despite thinking that Langdon and Charlie should save up some energy for their mile some two hours later and their 2-mile 3 hours after that, and Alexander in 4 events over the course of the next 10 hours, I decided that we should just let everybody give it their all and see what happens.  My thought was that the mile was going to be tough for Langdon and Charlie anway, Alexander's next event was 4 hours way, Jahmari Kenney had a shot at breaking 2:20 (elite performance) to become just the 4th STC 7th grader to do so, Langdon had a shot at making the record board, we had a very likely shot at winning the event which would therefore set the meet record and given the unseasonably cool weather, might help that record stay for a while.  We also could pass Louisa's state-leading MS 4x800 time of 9:17.  A good time (sub 9:09) would even put this squad as the second best team on the STC record board.  Charlie had a great lead-off leg which pushed him to 9th on the STC MS all-time list, Jahmari almost broke 2:20 (.8 away), Alexander had a solid 3rd leg to keep a lengthy lead, and Langdon went after it and ended up 3rd on the STC MS all-time list with 2:10.71.  The team itself became the 4th best in STC MS history, just 1 second from 3rd and 2 seconds from 2nd.  Despite this great race to get us started, I immediately questioned my decision.  Charlie wasn't feeling great and was also bleeding all over his finger after getting a baton smashed up the side of his finger.  After vomiting post-race, Langdon proceeded to spend the next hour or so curled up in a blanket on a chair, needing to run a mile in about 80 minutes.  Somehow, Langdon and Charlie were able to rally and push through a solid mile which equated to a 4:56 1600 for Langdon and 5:01 1600 for Charlie.  The fact that they did not score made me question my decision to put them in this event and also the 2-mile three hours after it.  Despite running these two hard races spanning a mile and a half, Langdon and Charlie toed the line for the 2-mile at around 4:15 in the afternoon, after having been there since 8:00am to be ready to run their 4x800 relay at 9:30.  Despite looking tired before the race was barely underway, they kept pushing as they have done all year long and as they had done earlier in the meet.  Langdon ended up crossing the line in 4th place (8 second PR) and Charlie 7th (5 second PR), just .15 seconds from a medal.  They finished 1st and 4th in the school team scoring and both knocked off the 2nd best 3200 runner in STC MS history to now sit 2-3 on the record board.  I think the fact that this duo ran so well in all 3 events yesterday is a credit to their toughness and the amount and quality of mileage they put in this season.  This is why we do weekend runs and this is why our team prefers to run the 400 and longer; because we know we can outwork teams in training for these events.  No discredit to them, but I am still shocked by how well Langdon and Charlie ran that 3200.  Charlie even made history by being the first ever STC MS runner to race in the white sunglasses, likely since most have earned it in the last meet or at time trials.

 

In the shorter races, we certainly had some strong performances.  The 4x100, which was almost our peak squad, ran a strong sub 50-second time to get a few more points for the team.  Two of our seven scoring instances in the meet came about 8 minutes apart from the same person.  Despite his ankle injury, Elex was able to get in some practice the last few days and also some good jumps in this meet as he jumps off of his good ankle.  Although the 400 was happening while Elex was still jumping, we tried to give Elex as much time and energy to focus on that high jump and not worry about the 400.  He got in the groove nicely and cleared 5-6, increasing his own STC MS record by another inch and also doing it in more legit fashion as this was done at a meet, and also earning a 3rd place medal in the event.  Literally moments after missing his final attempt at 5-8, which is the Varsity state meet qualifying height by the way, Elex put on his spikes, jogged a bit on the field, and then lined up to test that recovering ankle in the individual 400.  Despite missing a PR by .7 seconds, he ran the 2nd fastest 400 time in STC MS history, and after being in a boot for 3 weeks!  This earned Elex two medals in the matter of about 8 minutes!  After a big point boost in the 2-Mile from Langdon and Charlie, we actually took the lead in the school team score with only 2 events to go.  After the 200, Stafford had moved into the lead with 43, Marstellar at 39, Danville at 38, and St. Chris at 38.  Danville and Marstellar did not have 4x400 teams entered, but the math was there for us to win this meet.  If we won the 4x400 and Stafford came in 4th, we would be co-state champions, and if they came in 5th or lower, we would win the meet.  Again, this was a lot to ask.  Stafford ran out of their minds running 3:44 to win the event, 13 seconds faster than their seed time.  That being said, we just needed a few points to get back into 2nd and we did that with a 3rd place school team finish and a faster time than this quartet ran earlier in the season.  Tapiwa Mutoti led off in a PR and Emmanuel Moore, Alexander, and Elex all had solid times under 1:00 to make that the 3rd fastest 4x400 in STC MS history.

 

Langdon stuck around to the end and joined the 4x400 team in accepting our runner-up school team trophy, representing the 5 boys who were not there (Charlie, Jassen, Jahmari, Corbett, Jayden), and all the other Saints track and field athletes that were not competing.  Speaking of which, thanks to David Brown for coming out to support his teammates on Saturday!  That was a pretty good showing for 10 guys (8 scorers) and it was a great experience for our 7s ahead of next year and also our 8s who may be involved in high school state meets in future years.