Thank you to everyone who came out to support the Saints today.  The state meet has been at some odd times with 2:00pm on a Sunday and now 5:20pm on a Saturday.  That low sun and wind today were tough to deal with for the runners and it certainly cooled off quickly during the awards, but thank you to our fans who braved that and also the parking (not as bad as last week!) to support the team.  I especially want to thank the boys as they have had a tough two weeks with some of them (Liam, Mac, Asa, Harvie, and Arjun) running in 4 meets across 11 days.  Liam and Harvie were also in the fall play that culminated this evening, adding more to their plate during this week especially.

 

After running just three days ago the same distance, it was great seeing the boys all drop times ranging from Harvie's 22 seconds to Mac's 68 seconds.  Asa also dropped over 1:00 from Wednesday's time with a 61-second drop and Liam was close with a 54-second drop.  The St. Catherine's 4k is admittedly slower due to the hills, smaller crowds, and GPS measured distance (usually longer) as opposed to wheeled distance.  Going back to last week's race in the wet and cool conditions, with no wind, we had Mac drop 26 seconds and Asa drop 3 seconds.  Liam, Harvie, and Arjun added a little bit from last weekend, and our trio of 7th graders did not run last week.  With the wind and big crowd today, it was a bit of a slower course than last week, so props to Mac and Asa for dropping time.  Especially for our guys that did not run last week, this was quite an experience with over 400 runners in one race.  I know this made it tough for our team who is used to running on slower, hillier courses, rather than this course which is like a "track on grass."  Due to this fact, I was proud of the way the boys handled themselves during the latter part of the race.  Thanks to live scoring at each of the chip mats, you could tell we were improving as the race progressed.  At 1600 meters we were 13th, at 2000 meters we were 11th, at 2700 meters we were 9th, and at the end (4000 meters) we were 7th.  Maybe if it was a 5k we could have kept moving up the ranks!  A shout out to Grant as he became just the 6th STC runner ever to break 15:00 on this course, ranking 5th just 3 seconds ahead of Macon Moring.  Grant was also the 11th non-8th grader in the race and Charlie was the 18th non-8th grader in the race.

 

In the team scoring, I did not want to project any pressure onto the boys, but I was hoping for a top 10 finish overall and a 3rd straight year as private/independent school champions.  Our goal is always improvement and I feel like if we focus on that, the score works out in a positive way.  We can't control what other teams do, so that is why I like to take this approach.  After last year's best team in middle school history, I didn't know what the state meet would hold for us this year when August rolled around.  But, as I saw these boys train and race every week, the predicted finish place in my mind seemed to click up as each week passed.  We have certainly developed a nice pack, as seen by the fact that we had the tightest spread between our 1st and 5th runners (41 seconds), 2nd only to Powhatan's 25-second spread (they were 21st place).  I knew we did not have the front runners like last year, but this tight pack was our key to doing so well this year.  Case in point, Grant, our top runner, ranked 19th among the #1 runners from each school team, yet our team ranked 7th.  I told the boys before the race that every place matters in a big race like this, and the final score was certainly evidence of that.  If we were 6 points lower, we would have been 6th, but if we were 3 points higher, we would have been 9th.  There were 35 scoring teams and 7 scoring clubs.  We beat 28 schools and 6 of the 7 clubs, giving us a record of 34-7 at this meet and pushing our season record to 86-17.  With 3 more meets ahead of us, we may crack the 100 win number for the first time ever!