This 12-mile relay meet is always a fun meet and a good way to mark the middle of the season.  I was happy to be a part of founding this meet with Coach Fleming at Collegiate back in 2015.  After a few years working out the kinks, it really has been a great piece of everyone's schedule, as you saw today with almost 30 relay teams in action from various schools.  We typically do this before our FUMA 5k, so it has served as a great way to make 3 miles feel more doable with the 20+ minute breaks between mile segments.  As 5 of our 8 runners today already ran the FUMA 5k, it was probably a nice step back to cover the same distance with some rest breaks in between.  It also serves as a great way to see most of the 5k course we will be running on 10/28 and again on 11/6.

 

While we were checking out the course, the red team was wondering what I thought about finish place and time.  I said something under 1:20 and I thought it would be a good battle with Steward, St. Bridget, and Collegiate, and both were certainly true as the meet progressed.  When I saw the Grove Christian van come in, I knew that team would probably have two good 9th graders on it (who were part of the winning team last year), so I thought they might also have a chance to be in the mix.  For our gray squad, I was looking to see our two veterans improve and was hoping this team could complete 11 of the 12 loops in 90 minutes.

 

The veterans on the red team, James and LB, had great splits, improving on every one of them from last season.  James, who might be the only STC runner in meet history to lead off the A team two years in a row, averaged almost 17 seconds faster per mile this year.  LB, moving from the 2nd slot to the anchor position this season, was 27 seconds per mile faster than a year ago.  Henry was our top runner and the only STC runner to break 6:00 for a split, running 5:54 on the first loop.  He averaged 6:11.7, just off of our sub-6:10 mile pace list of individuals.  Gray had our 2nd best average on the team with a 6:33 and found himself as the leading runner on a few occasions throughout the 12 miles.  The team averaged 6:32.7 across the 12 miles, making it onto our elite performance list as a team, now sitting 11th all-time.  I was also proud of the team for not having any of their 12 splits over 7:00.

 

The veterans on the gray team, Tate and Lawson, also saw some great improvement from a year ago.  Lawson averaged 30 seconds per mile faster than last year, anchored by his final split which was 1:00 faster than he ran a year ago.  Tate had the biggest drop of all our veterans with a mile pace that was 32.7 seconds faster than a year ago.  Thanks to a strong first leg, Asher, the gray team lead-off leg, had a sub-8:00 average.  Crosby, the anchor leg kept his average under 10:00, also thanks to a strong first mile.  Asher and Crosby were the only two runners on the team to run a faster 3rd loop than their 2nd loop, so a shout-out to each of them for their strong finishes.

 

All-in-all, it was a very successful meet for us from a timing standpoint.  In the race for first, the prediction of a close race was accurate.  Early on, Grove Christian would take the lead after all the 1st runners, then Steward and Collegiate would work their way up to first after the 2nd runners, then we would make our move with 3rd runners, moving up to first or close to it.  Then, Steward looked to make their move during the 4th loop to be up in the lead.  It was certainly yo-yo-ing between teams early in the race, with St. Bridget and the St. Edward's mixed teams being the first to start to fade.  Then it was Grove Christian and Collegiate fading, leaving the final loop battle to Steward and our red team.  It was a great battle down to the wire and ended up being the 2nd closest finish in the 11-year meet history, with Steward edging us out by 13 seconds.  Although Collegiate edging us out by 3 seconds in 2017 remains the tightest finish ever in meet history, 13 seconds is basically the equivalent to 1 second per leg, which is not much time at all.  The red team continued a long tradition of STC success at this meet, giving us our 4th runner-up finish to go with 6 victories, accounting for 10 of the 11 years the meet was held.  There are a few asterisks with that as we were the top middle school runners-only team in 3 of those runner-up years (2017, 2023, and 2025), finishing behind teams with 9th and/or 10th graders on them.  That is what happens when you attend a JV meet as 9th and 10th graders are allowed to compete.  This year's red team logged the 17th fastest time in meet history, and as noted earlier, we have 11 of those top 17 times.