In our final meet of the calendar year, there was a  lot to be proud of. The Saints walked away with 27 total personal records, two elite performances, eleven Saints earning individual points for the team, and beat four of five visiting teams handily. However, our friends at Franklin Military were able to edge us out by 7.5 points in the team score, walking away with their first meet win of the season. For those of you who prefer cold, hard numbers - this DOC is for you.

The team seemed a little slow to wake up and get into the Saturday morning format as opposed to our previous Friday meet. Where we over-performed last week in the field events, we had a little tougher time reaching the same results. The Long Jump, for instance, had only a 50% success rate in meeting or exceeding our previous best marks. Part of that was likely due to the very advantageous pit at the previous meet (reportedly a bit of a pit in the pit, which will inflate jump lengths). Even so, William was able to tie his best mark and Colin was able to earn his first mark in this event. Luca Hall was our only scoring long jumper this week, earning 6th place credit for the team. Tate was able to improve on his bound from last week’s meet, surpassing his previous best by 2 inches. The big winner in the area of improvement, though, was Winston with a whopping 14 inches of improvement from what he set just six days earlier.

Shot Put earned us more points for the meet than long jump, but was stingier in allotting personal best throws. We had three saints in scoring positions: Davis, Ivan, and Palmer in 3rd, 4th, and 8th respectively. Ely had the largest gain for the day, tossing his cannon ball a full foot further than what he had done at the final meet of last winter’s season! Gray, fresh off of his neeper from last week, added another seven inches to his tally. Speaking of neepers, Paul entered his first marks in the Shot Put this week as well.

Our biggest scoring field event this week was the High Jump. All three of our high jumpers ended in scoring positions. To be fair, there were few enough competitors in this event that clearing a single height was enough to score, but it underscores the importance of covering as many events as possible, especially the difficult and technical ones like high jump. Aidan was our top jumper this week, drawing level with his PR from last week and earning 3rd place in the meet. Mike was the big improver this meet, clearing two more heights than he did last week for a 4 inch Personal Record. Freddy was a little bummed with his jumps today, but earned the team 5th place points, showing again that there are a lot of ways to walk away with a win in track and field.

The 4x800 got us started on the track and our team picked up second place points for their finish. Normally in meets like this where your friendly neighborhood coaching staff are also the meet officials, it is very difficult to get the splits on events. But thanks to a patient Coach Carrier and the magic of cellular devices with video capabilities, technology allowed us to get times for these runners - a good thing too since 3 members of the team logged personal records! The dynamic duo of Miko and Ely, fresh off of running this event last week, again reduced their personal best times. Ely dropped three seconds and Miko lost another seven. Chapin had not run this event since last year during the 6th Grade PE Competition and obliterated his old time by 21 seconds, dropping below the three minute threshold for the first time.

We had a more reserved number of athletes in the 55m dash this meet. This is one of the more difficult events to score in as it is often the event with the most participants since a lot of teams don’t stretch to the higher distance events. We had one PR this week here: Luca DiMeglio entered his first mark in the dash, coming in with an initial time under the 9-second mark.

The indoor “mile” set up a markee battle between our own Davis Mullen, our buddy from Grove Christian, Zern Small, and a third runner from Hanover. The guys didn’t disappoint, racing across the line just over the 5:00 mark, a time we have yet to crack as indoor track saints. While the indoor white sunglasses were safe this week, the elite level performances here were still pretty awesome. Davis took second place points for the team. Gray ran out of his mind this week, dropping his PR time by 28 seconds and is now threatening the 6-minute mark, which is a big one for the middle school guys. Paul continues to chip away at his time as well, with a season on cross country in hand, he PR’ed at the November time trials and now cut away eight more seconds to drop below 6:45.

The second relay of the day saw three teams of Saints take to the track. Our top team of Ivan, Freddy, William, and Luca Hall, was quick enough to grab a second place standing with the second fastest time we’ve laid down this year. Our second team of Connor, Arun, Leo, and Winston raced to a 6th place finish for us. Kudos and many thanks to JD for jumping in to fill in for an ill teammate in our third relay team, letting those other three guys (Tate, Colin, & Jeb) get their event in, not disrupting any other events, and netting us a 7th place finish as a quartet.

Our only solo first place finish on the day came in the 500 from Aidan, running largely by his lonesome for the second half of the race. He’s eyeing the Elite mark for this event and has been less than a second off twice already this season, hopefully a sign of things to come! Palmer was our only other competitor in this beast of a race and he pulled down 5th place points for the Saints.

Mr. Cross’s favorite, “the A thousand,” was next in the meet. In this race, Chapin earned both 8th place points for the race and reduced his personal best by seven seconds from what he set at the Bruner Inter-squad Meet in November. He’s really developing into a tough mid-distance guy!

Starting back over in the “garage-door corner,” the 300m dash was next. Luca Hall led the way for St. Christopher’s with a 6th place finish (earning himself a PR by half a second on the way). He is now less than a second from Elite status in this sprint! Leo had our biggest improvement this week, dropping five seconds from his NEPR at the Bruner Meet. Winston and Connor were our new kids on the block in this event, each setting their own first marks.

The 3200 continues to be an area of strength for the team as we put three athletes into the top 8. In middle school, just having the confidence and mental strength to compete in this 16 lapper is enough of a bar that most schools don’t even have athletes willing to try. The coaches are very proud of the fact that we are the exception to the rule. We had THREE athletes take their first crack at the race today, with Tate, Paul, and William all earning their Neeper. Veteran Ely ran it again only six days after last tackling this beast… and dropped 59 seconds on the way! William took fourth, Ely took fifth, and Paul (doing the iron-man 1600/3200 double this week - yeah, that’s 3 miles of racing of 24 laps on the short track) took the 8th place spot.

Ending the meet with the 4x400 is a beautiful thing (Dunn’s favorite Relay, can you tell?). Finishing the meet off with a 1st place finish is even more beautiful. The squad of Aidan, Palmer, Ivan, and Davis raced to two PRs (Davis lowered his already Elite time another 0.06 seconds and Ivan dropped one more second) and a team season record by 0.09 seconds. Our “B” Relay took fifth overall and on the way three relay members earned personal bests. Luca DiMeglio shaved off 0.2 seconds from his Bruner Meet time and Arun snuck past his best by 0.04. Gray earned his third PR of the day and the biggest drop of the 4x400 at three seconds off his best.

Aidan (16), Davis (14), and Luca Hall (6) were our top individual scorers for the meet, earning 4th, 7th, and 19th as individuals compared to the whole field of athletes. Ivan, William, Mike and Palmer tied for 24th place with their 5 individual points. Full meet results can be found at this MileStat link.

As you can see, a solid meet. We definitely felt some of the absences and didn’t have the coverage we enjoyed last week due to some lower numbers. Hanover is a stronger distance squad than we saw last meet and soaked up a few of the points we enjoyed in events that Franklin Military is not as strong in. Looking back at the line-up, it is hard for me to now justify the third 4x200, when pushing four of those guys to stretch to a 4x800 instead would have been more advantageous for the team. A few small tweaks to maximize coverage in the high jump might have been the better call. Some coaching calls that should have been better, possibly. Silver lining, hopefully it fires us up even more for the January meet!

BONUS RESULTS:

The night before the meet, the Varsity ran their meet during our usual time-slot in order to beat out the exam blackout. As they often do, Arun and Ivan joined the bug guys for some pole vaulting. Fresh off his PR from last week, Ivan added another 6” height to his name and earned 3rd place varsity points for his 4th place finish, but this clearance is an important one! Now at 9 feet, Ivan becomes just the fifth StC middle school athlete to hit the Elite mark in pole vault! Congratulations! Meanwhile, Arun also set a PR with another Elite performance for him. At 10-9, his new mark now sets him no longer tied for 2nd StC MS All-Time, but three inches beyond Columbia University athlete Ian Smith and second only to current senior and vaulting phenom Victor Olesen. Congratulations to you as well! Enjoy the rare air fellas!

EXTRA BONUS RESULTS:

Twas the day before Christmas Break, and all through the Field House, not a creature was stirring, except the crazy track athletes who wanted to get in just one more practice together before heading off campus! Our annual traditional noon-optional-practice-on-the-last-day-of-school was yet again fun and a great success! JD earned a Neeper in the 300, getting his first crack at that event running against Palmer and Luca Hall. The 500 was a bit nuts with three of three guys earning accolades. Mike and Luca Testani each earned a Neeper running against Aidan who lowered his 500 time again and again ran a 1:20.x for the third time this season (that Elite is gonna taste sweet real soon). Freddy, Ivan, Luca Hall, and guest runner Aveon blasted off a 200 which helped Miko to a half-second PR. Ely has been running the 3200 so much, all he wanted for the holidays was a shot at the 1600 - which he ran completely solo to a PR of 6:37.75 - a PR of an absurd 26 seconds from his personal best back in the fall with the XC team! We even played around with some High Jump, where Luca Testani and Aveon each set their PR to 4’ 1”! Several other guys decided to just stretch and jog inside with the company of the team around them. Fantastic.