Today was a fun way to (almost) end the season.  We coaches look forward to the light-hearted nature of the SPAM race and we hope the runners and parents enjoyed it as well, despite the rain.  This race began in 2004 when St. Chris and Collegiate decided to have a dual meet in a week where everyone in every sport at every level seemed to face Collegiate.  However, in true cross country runner style, this competition became more of a fun, lighthearted event between the two schools, showing the respect runners have for each other and all of the hard work training for the past few months of the fall season.  Sure, each team wants to win, but as you could tell if you were there today, it is more of a relaxed vibe at the start with each school showing that mutual respect for each other.  In 2004, the awards were random food items from the nearby Getty Mart, and the following year, the race went to all SPAM with a small 2-can high wall.  The Human SPAM also made it's debut in 2005 as I believe did the predict-your-time contest.  Since then, coaches, veteran runners, and even some injured runners, have worn the SPAM costume.  This year was historic as it was the first St. Cat's coach to wear the costume.  Around 2009, a downed tree on the course towards the end of the loop added a second jump and the SPAM wall continued to grow in height.  When that tree was cleaned up around 2012, we went to adding a box jump in its place to preserve the extra jump.  In 2017, the St. Catherine girls finally joined the fun and the trophies were re-done to have four trophies for each gender champion and runner-up.  These trophies live with the victor for a year until it is brought back to the next SPAM race.  Also in 2017, due to the rising cost of actual cans of SPAM to near $3.00 a can, the move was made to start purchasing cheaper items from the SPAM website.  In 2018, a shelf was added to help stabilize the wall on the uneven ground and the typical wall height of 6 cans (19.5 inches) can now easily be achieved.  In 2019, all 15 varieties (minus pumpkin spice which sold out in two hours when it went on sale on September 23rd of this year) were part of the wall for the first time.  Also this year, we moved the finish from its abrupt end near the corner behind the start to its equidistant and new finish home in the middle of the field.  I wonder what tweak will be added in 2020!

 

In terms of the race, it was another year of domination for the Saints, and it was the first time both genders of Saints won the race.  The girls squeaked out a 3-point victory while the boys had a near-perfect low score of 16 (1 point away) to Collegiate's 41 points.  This gave us our 6th victory in a row and 10 of the 14 titles.  Our win was the 3rd biggest win, and 2nd lowest score, in meet history.  We took the first four spots and 10 of the top 20, showing our domination once again.  Grady White used his mullet power to give him the victory, 20 seconds ahead of his time last year when he got 10th.  Alex and Gray also broke 13:00 with Henry just 9 seconds over 13:00.  We had a spread of 45 seconds from Grady back to Colby, our 5th man, who ran 13:31 for 6th overall.  Carter, Patrick (woo-hoo!), Declan, Cade, and Ben took most of the spots from 12th to 20th place.  And, after their big mile pace drops last Thursday, Patteson and Tate continued to drop their mile pace again today.  And of course, despite wearing a boot and dealing with the rain, Liam did a great job cheering on the guys and being the box jump police for us!  The Collegiate girls, despite losing the team title, produced a new course record by 11 seconds and also had just the 3rd ever perfect time prediction, so a shout out to them as well.  We will look to keep the trophy for a 7th straight year come 2020, but you never know what could happen at SPAM!