Our one and only "Varsity" meet of the season was a bit of a roller coaster. The back and forth of whether the weather was going to cancel us caused quite a few of us, coaches included, to be a little underprepared mentally for this meet. The competition we saw was less impressive than what we would have seen had all of the schools originally scheduled been in attendance. Nevertheless, a solid meet it was with quite a few notable performances, as follows here:

Our High Jumping duo completed a pretty successful week on the mats. After both guys set new PR heights in practice the day before, Luca Testani and Miko bumped up another inch in the meet to defeat their 24 hour old PRs. Miko is now threatening the 4 foot barrier and Luca is poised to become our third 4-6 jumper of the year.

Shot Put was much better than it looked online (somehow the official results got scrambled). Two of our guys got to set their first marks in this event - welcome to the lists Henry and Aidan! I was impressed with Gray and Bo, who have had some issues keeping them away from the track recently, but were all-in on competing in at least one event. Being willing to come in just to throw netted them each a PR (Bo by 14.5 inches and Gray by almost 8!). Thanks for your willingness to do what you could and I'm glad it worked out so well. Chapin also had a big PR, adding 10.75" to his best and Connor added a little over 3 inches from his previous throw from two weeks ago.

After a long pause on this event, Palmer jumped back in to Long Jump with a one inch personal best over his Spring Track mark. Luca Hall also PRed by 8 inches and is now within striking distance of the Elite mark of 16 feet. We might be seeing some fireworks during time trial week!

Despite going against Upper School competition, we did have two 1st place finishes at the meet - Pole Vault was one of them. Arun's ten foot vault was good enough to take the day - not bad for a 7th grader!

On the Track, our 4x800 teams both set solid times (third and fifth best team times of the season). During the race, Connor earned his neeper for this event with a time that solidifies him right in the middle of a solid pack of distance guys. Aidan was able to beat his paced 800 time from last spring by a second in his leg of the race. Luca Testani had the biggest 800 drop of the day, improving by three seconds from two weeks ago and going under 2:40 for the first time.

The 55m dash is an event that really only make sense timing with the FAT system, so if you don't ever run it in a meet, you likely never get a time in this event. Circumstances what they were, the tight timing of this meet coupled with a few other factors (including removal of the participant restriction on this event) let us have a record number of athletes in this race series. Distance guy Davis got to have his yearly go at the 55 and bettered his one successful attempt from last year with an Elite-level PR! His 7.67 second dash makes him the third on our team to hit Elite status in this event this year and ranks him 17th all-time, tied with Luke Gathright. Paul, Mike, and Luca Hall all raced this distance for the first time and earned their Neepers, with Luca's debut of just over 8 seconds being particularly notable. Any time shaved in this VERY quick event is cause for celebration, and we had six guys lower their personal bests. Tilghman earned the biggest drop on the day with over half a second of time improvement. His time also got him under 10 seconds for the first time. Palmer crept closer to the 8-second barrier while Leo broke 9 for the first time. Colin, Winston, and JD also all hit PRs - the first two from way back in December.

Eli and William were our sole competitors in the 1600 and they spent most of the race in contact with each other. Eli looked to be getting back to form coming off of his injuries and at only a few seconds off of his PR, clocked a season record setting himself up nicely for the Spring. William, working with Eli, again showed some strength in the final laps of the race to kick ahead to a PR of about a second. William and Eli took 5th and 6th places respectively in the meet overall.

After a last minute change where we needed to skip the 4x200, our middle school Saints were back for the 500. West led the way for our team with a PR that puts him less than a second away from Elite status (and more excitingly for him 0.05 ahead of his brother). Luca DiMeglio was the other veteran of this event to get a personal best, dropping about a second from where he was in November. Arun set his first mark in the 500 finishing right behind Luca with a solid surge to the finish. Luca Hall also debuted in this event, and like the 55 earlier impressed the coaches with an initial time just a short clip from Elite!

The A Thousand saw three more distance / mid-distance guys (Paul, Connor, and Aidan) try out this event and earn their NEPR badge. Aidan's time was good enough for a 6th place finish on the day and marked the fastest 1000 run by a member of the team this year so far (though Davis still has the fastest team time from last season). 

In the 300m dash, five of our athletes earned some accolades this week. Colin, who has been on the rise at the end of the season, dropped his best time by 0.38 seconds from just 2 weeks earlier. Tilghman also earned a quarter second PR, making his day a perfect 2 for 2 on improvement. William earned a NEPR, breaking the 50-second barrier in his first go at this briefer-than-he's-used-to event. Eli was our leader in this event for the day. Lastly, JD had the biggest drop of the day, shedding ten seconds from his time from mid-January! Wow!

We had a quartet in the team's last 3200 of the season (this event is not typically contested at the JV Invite). Davis ended his day winning the event for the middle school Saints with a solid Elite time about a dozen seconds off his previous best. Ely and Miko, as has been typical for them, ran the event together and finished 4th and 5th with only a hundredth of a second splitting their final times. Teddy earned our one PR in the 3200 this meet, improving his time from last Spring by FIFTY seconds, breaking 15:00 for the first time in the process!

All-in-all a successful meet, if a weird one, with a lot of athletes trying out new events pretty late in the season. We are impressed with how well our guys embraced some of those changes, did well, and started looking forward to the final meet and time trials beyond. Well done, lads.