StC News

Saints Win 5th Straight JV Prep League Title

Coach Carrier
Despite missing almost 1/3 of the team due to illness, LT Nguyen's individual win led a group of 12 boys with personal bests to secure another JV Prep League title, a race we have not lost since its inception in 2017.
Coming off of what feels like the pinnacle of our season with the SPAM race on Wednesday, today was the end of a busy final week and one more chance for the boys to get in a 5k.  We were looking to improve upon our times from the Collegiate 5k last Thursday and this flatter course was set up to help us do that.  However, mother nature dropping some 75-degree and sunny weather on us for November 4th did not help the matter, nor did the cut tall grass and openness of the course.  This would be great with hundreds of people lining the course like at MileStat or MS States, but the subdued nature of the JV race today did not create that extra buzz like earlier meets at Pole Green.  All in all, the boys did perform well.  We had 9 of our 14 who ran both today and at Collegiate last week drop time from that Collegiate 5k, led by Asa White's 1:23 improvement and Arjun Anand's :38 improvement.  Matthew Matthews (:33) and Sidney Hetherington (:28) also had solid drops.  Of the 8 who did not drop time, 1 only added 2 seconds, and 3 did not race last week.  Of that trio that did not race, Brodie Schlobohm ran his first 5k today, so that was quite a milestone for him.  Mitchell Gallagher dropped 1:22 from his FUMA 5k last year, oddly enough, his only other 5k with STC cross country in two seasons.  Henry Nelson also ran his first 5k of this season, dropping :59 from his previous personal best at the Collegiate 5k last season.  I know some of our boys, particularly up front, were a bit bummed with their times as they were going for some time milestones of 18:00, 19:00, and/or 20:00, but in the grand scheme of things, there was still plenty of improvement today.
 
This is the last chance I get to say this, but LT Nguyen once again led the way for us.  He won the individual title in 18:10, which was a 12-second drop from his time last week.  His time lowers his own 2nd best STC middle school 5k time ever, just 12 seconds from Asher Green's STC middle school 5k record.  His individual win marks the 3rd for STC since this JV Prep League meet began in 2017, joining Ford Clark (2018) and Asher Green (2021).  Mitchell Gallagher grabbed 3rd place and almost cracked the 19:00 barrier.  His time of 19:03 puts him 5th on the all-time STC 5k list behind Asher, LT, James Edwards, and Ford.  That is certainly some good company there, and as 4 of those 5 will all be on the Varsity team next year, look out!  As a side note, LT's time today would have put him 18th in the Varsity race, 3 slots from All-Prep, and Mitchell's would have put him 26th.
 
From a scoring standpoint, we really had to show our depth today.  With two other teams having the minimum 5 runners to score, it was essentially another dual meet with Collegiate.  Their 3rd man returned and their 5th man ran well today.  On our side of things, we had some challenges with 3 of our top 9 out, as well as another top 7 runner having an "off" day.  All in all, sickness crushed us today with 7 boys missing.  In fact, despite our numerous meets this season, we never actually ran our full squad of 24!  Despite all of these challenges, we held off Collegiate with a 23-34 win, as well as STAB with 81.  This continues our undefeated streak at the JV Prep League race, taking every race since it began in 2017.  This put our final 2022 season record at a dominating 83-2.  Speaking of dominating, along with our goal of personal bests today, our other goal was to dominate the JV race and strike a little fear in the rest of the Prep League by showing how strong our high school team is going to continue to be in the coming years.  Even with 7 boys missing, I think we accomplished that goal with our "sea of red".
 
The success of the middle school cross country team in recent years has certainly translated well to the upper school team.  They too dominated their race today, putting 8 in the top 14 (top 15 are All-Prep and get a medal).  This domination gave them a 34-48 win over 2nd place Collegiate and sets them up well for a run at the state title next weekend.
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