Thank you to everyone who drove all the way out to FUMA, including Coach Horne, the most famous version of "human SPAM" in SPAM meet history, who came out to support the boys.  It was a small crew with 3 of our 9 runners not able to attend.  It actually marked the first time in STC middle school XC history that we did not have a full team of 7 score in a meet.  When we used to be a JV team of 7-8-9, we did run a special 9th grade race at FUMA a few times and did not have a scoring 5.  Despite our smaller team, the 6 boys in attendance ran hard and there were once again a lot of positives.

 

This meet provides a nice variety in terms of travel (our longest travel to a meet), variety of competition (many teams we do not see at other meets), distance (our first 5k), and terrain (a winding course with hills, woods, and tight turns).  The weather was certainly nice too as it was sunny, dry, and not too warm.  Although this meet was a week earlier than normal, we planned to use our Roslyn mile pace from Wednesday as the goal for the FUMA 5k, despite it being .85 miles longer.  This was a good approach and proved to be a goal that much of the team was able to hit.  Crosby had the biggest pace drop of anyone, going 15 seconds per mile faster at FUMA than on Wednesday.  Gray had the race of the day and was 14 seconds ahead of his mile pace from Wednesday, and like LB, broke 7:00 pace.  Paul was 11 seconds faster per mile than he was on Wednesday and LB was 1 second per mile faster.  James was close at just 1 second over his mile pace from Wednesday.  Of our trio of veterans, LB had a nice improvement from this race a year ago, dropping 36 seconds.  He also eclipsed his PR from last year (at Collegiate in late October) by 14 seconds.

 

Our top 4 runners came in with the goal to all earn a medal (top 25) and they were able to achieve that goal.  LB just missed out on a medal last year in 29th place, but did not leave that to chance this year, finishing in 12th place.  Gray was steps behind after locking onto LB shortly after the mile mark, finishing in 13th place.  This was a huge breakthrough race for him and the team, becoming our third #2 runner in our first four meets (intrasquad included).  This fluctuation of our top runners is important for the team to continue to be successful as nobody feels like they always have to be #1, or #2, or #3, etc.  Everyone is more supportive of each other knowing that a finish place on the team is never guaranteed, but knowing everyone will try their best each meet, and that is good for the team.  Henry grabbed our 3rd medal of the day in 16th place and James moved up 10 slots from last year's finish to grab the final medal in 25th place.  Without Asher, Tate, and Lawson, it was great to see Crosby and Paul each run ahead of their goal times for this meet, serving as our 5th and 6th runners at FUMA.

 

In the team scoring, we were in a close battle for 3rd, the last team plaque position, just getting edged out by Henley and Fluvanna by 12 and 10 points, respectively.  We were well ahead, 46 points, of the 6th place team, Regents.  It is possible that our full team of 9 may have been able to bump us up to 3rd, but it doesn't help to dwell on the hypothetical.  The 6 guys that came on Saturday ran hard, we had a lot of improvement, and we had a respectable team showing.  We actually had as many medalists (4) as runner-up Veritas and had more medalists than the two teams ahead of us, Henley and Fluvanna, who each only had 3 medalists.