Although we were down almost half of our team (16 out of 35) for various injuries, sicknesses, and other conflicts, the 19 boys that ran did an excellent job.  We almost "ran the table" with 18 of the 19 boys earning an individual event PR, with 2 relay split PRs to go with it, and the rare 400 PR during the opening lap of the 800.  These big PRs today were earned in events that most boys were stepping up to for the first time since time trials in February.

 

The cool and cloudy morning was helpful for our 3200 runners who kicked off the meet at 10:00am.  Although the sun did start to peek through the clouds during that race, it was relatively cool and our trio of runners had three very impressive times.  Coming off his 32-second PR at Timberwolf two weeks ago, LB was back in his 3rd 3200 of the season, looking for more improvement.  He did just that by dropping 14 more seconds to get down to 12:11, just under 12 seconds from breaking the elite performance 12:00 mark.  LB's efforts were also very helpful to two other Saints running in their debut 3200.  Carson was one of those athletes and he did a great job latching onto LB and staying with him for the first four laps and staying within 1-3 seconds of LB during the next three laps.  He finished right at his Coach Carrier predicted seed time of 12:20.  The other athlete that benefited from LB's strong sense of pace just north of 12:00 was St. Catherine's 8th grader Molly Scholten.  Molly, sister of 6th grader Cliff, the fastest 6th grader currently at 6:00 for 1600, ran a strong race to finish just behind LB and run the 2nd fastest 3200 in this meet's history.  Her time puts her as the 2nd fastest St. Catherine's 3200 runner on the team this season (grades 7-12), so she may have a strong presence in the upcoming LIS and State Championship meets.  Our third runner in the 3200, Hudson, was our "big drop" runner of this event, cutting more than 1:07 from his previous 3200 PR.  Well done, Hudson!

 

In the 400, our trio of athletes also all had PRs.  What made this more impressive was that two of them had PRs during our 400 time trial on Wednesday of this week.  Lucas cut a few seconds from his best time to come within about a second of the 400.  David dropped 2 seconds from his time on Wednesday, where he dropped 5 seconds.  Henry dropped almost 8 seconds from his best time, despite his 4.5-second drop on Wednesday.  Kudos to this double PR duo in the 400 this week.  One other note about the 400 was that we also got to see future STC 8th grader next year, Jaimeson Ginsberg, run his first-ever 400.  He has done some strong sprints for Short Pump middle school this season (12.30 on the 100 and 25.50 in the 200), so we invited him just days ago to join us and try his first 400.  He had a great time of 57.08, finishing second in the event.  His time would put him 12th on our STC MS all-time list in the 400 and would make him the 8th guy on this year's team under 1:00.  That's two 4x400 relays both under 4:00 on one team!  I know that was a tough step up in distance, but well done from him to give the event a shot.  Just imagine how he will do training with us next year!

 

The 1600 saw a lot of specific barriers get broken for the first time.  However, we have to start with mentioning Eddie's ridiculously awesome drop of 1:46.  It was fun to see him completely skip over the 7:00 mark for his 1600, going from the 8s to the 6s.  In that same opening heat, Levon had a solid 5.5 second PR.  The second heat brought two guys who had to drop over 20 seconds to try and break the 6:00 barrier.  They went after it, especially the last lap, and both DJ Smith and Reid Pemberton crossed the line in 5:57, under the 6:00 barrier for the first time.  The final heat saw Palmer lower his already sub-6:00 time by about 5 seconds to a 5:50.  Also in the final heat, Jahmari and Aidan were going for an elite performance under 5:20 and they did just that.  Both boys ran in the 5:12s, each dropping over 9 seconds to get that elite performance time.  Jahmari ranks 19th STC MS all-time with Aidan in the 22nd slot.  There have also only been a handful of 7th graders who have run faster than Aidan's time, so congrats to him.

 

The final individual event was the 800 and we had a good-sized group in that event with 6 guys running it.  Tapiwa ended up winning the event with Eli (3rd) and James Pickren (4th).  Tapiwa dropped a second from his previous best with James Pickren dropping a substantial 12.5 seconds from his PR and almost breaking 2:30 in the process.  Other big drops in the 800 came from James Bajcsi who dropped over 10 seconds from his best and John who dropped 17.5.  This improvement number from John is impressive, almost breaking 2:40, but it is worth noting that John also had a 4.5-second PR in the 400 during the opening half of the 800 race.  Arun had a strong first lap to his 800 but ended up getting sick all over himself right around the halfway point.  He did the best he could to keep pushing that second lap and actually still earned a personal best!  Perhaps even more impressive was that he said he would still run the 4x400 at the end of the meet (the next event after the girls 800).  Way to tough that out, Arun.

 

In the 4x400, most guys are pretty tired, especially the 800 runners who ran the event right before the relays.  Despite that fatigue, we had some solid times with LB and James Pickren earning PRs.  James moved up to 26th on the all-time STC MS 400 list with his over a second PR, right after his 12.5-second PR in the 800 not long before it (especially with combining all 10 relay teams into 1 heat).  I think the A 4x400 team even surprised themselves with their time of 3:56.04.  Thanks to two other elite performance times from Jahmari and Tapiwa, and a solid time from Aidan, this relay team moved into 7th on the STC MS all-time list in the 4x400.  They also just missed the meet record by over a second.  We had a lot of fill-ins for the C & D relays, so thank you to Henry and James B for jumping in for the absent/injured guys on the team.

 

The big drops across the board in "distance" events shows the work the boys have been putting in during practice, specifically on our endurance runs, so let's keep working hard in practice (and the weekend) to keep the improvement train rolling into our next two meets on May 4th and May 8th.  FYI - This meet was not scored, but despite not having almost half of the team and not making a lineup with the intention of scoring points, we still would have won the meet today.  The detailed results with splits and improvement numbers are attached, as are the updated meet records.

 

Thank you to the coaches for their help today.  Coach Dunn was the starter and finish judge, Coaches Cross and Bey did the clerking and Coach Cross also helped with relay exchanges.  Coach Hornik and Librarian Williams were inputting the results so the completed results could be posted shortly after the meet.  Coach Via even made it to catch the end of the meet after a long flight from San Francisco this morning.  We look forward to having him back this week.  Thank you also to everyone who ran in the STC families & friends 4x400 after the meet.  We appreciate you all being good sports about doing that.  Those unofficial results are below.  Several teams asked to shorten that to a 4x100 or 4x200, so we will take that under advisement for next year!

Dunn x3/Carrier) - 4:47.80

Holloway x2/Scholten/Nguyen - 4:57.36

Mutoti - 5:12.69

Telfian/Armstrong - 5:28.12

Judd - 5:32.50

Morgan - 5:38.20