We certainly went out on top this past Friday, and I am not just talking about the win.  Despite the relatively small race of just under 40 runners, the Saints clearly came in with a mission and used their course knowledge from earlier this year and the nice weather to propel them to personal bests.  Knowing what I know about FUMA versus the Collegiate course, plus the weather being much better this past Friday versus at Collegiate the week before, I was not only hoping for improvement from FUMA on 9/29, but also hoping for the "lofty" goal of everyone surpassing their PRs from Collegiate just 8 days earlier.  And, wouldn't you know it, every boy hit that "lofty" goal, a perfect 12 for 12.  I am guessing it would have been 13 for 13 if Mac was there, especially the way he was running at the end of the season, breaking 21:00 at Collegiate and only one second from the SPAM victory earlier last week.  Of the 10 boys who ran at FUMA, 9 runners dropped at least 56 seconds or more from that race (the 10th boy dropped 30, which is a pretty good day too).  Several boys dropped multiple minutes from FUMA on 9/29, including McCoy Eakin at -3:14 and Asa White at -2:09.  Liam Dunn, Nic McDonnell, Charlie Branch, Harvie Wilkinson, and Grant Clarke were all over 1:00 faster than the first FUMA meet, with Arjun Anand (-58) and Avery Berents (-56) not far off that magic minute mark of improvement.  More astonishing was the improvement from Collegiate 8 days earlier.  Although 2 of our boys did not run a PR at Collegiate, the other 10 dropped over a cumulative 8:00 of time, averaging almost 50 seconds of improvement per runner in that group of 10.  Rand Shumadine was the breakout race of the meet with his 2:39 improvement from the week before.  Aedan Imbert also had a nice drop of 1:08 from the week before with Liam Dunn just missing the minute improvement mark from Collegiate with his 59-second improvement.  I already mentioned McCoy's 3:14 improvement from the earlier FUMA meet.  He did have a tough day at Collegiate but it is worth mentioning that he was over 7:00 faster than his Collegiate 5k this time around.  We did have some unlucky final times for Asa and Harvie as each just missed breaking a time barrier.  Harvie was .09 seconds from breaking 22:00 and Asa was .98 seconds from breaking 20:00.  Asa just missed the 15:00 mark at Roslyn earlier this season, running 15:04.  Despite missing these two marks, these were impressive times and he will certainly be mentioned for years to come for being the next guy on each of those lists.  Charlie's time was just under the 20:00 mark at 19:56, so that puts him as 22nd all-time and Asa at 24th all-time (junior Liam Kurzawa is 23rd with a 19:59).  Grant's time of 19:19 was the fastest ever run by a 7th grade STC runner on FUMA (Charlie's was the 4th fastest) and his time ranks 2nd all-time for any STC 5k run by a 7th grader, 1 second ahead of Aubrey Bowles who ran 19:20 at Collegiate in his 7th grade season.  Ninth grader James Edwards holds the 7th grade record of 18:43.  Grant's time also puts him in a tie for 9th fastest 5k runner in STC MS history.  The boys ran this race a bit differently than the first FUMA race, running with more confidence and a more aggressive approach to that first mile.  They were clearly more controlled the first time around being the first 5k ever for many of them, but it was great to see them have the confidence to be more aggressive this time around and know they had the training under them to allow them to hang on.

 

The score was another beating as it was essentially another dual meet with Collegiate, with Woodberry in there too as STAB and FUMA each only had 4 runners and did not score.  We scored a near perfect 16 points going 1-6 (except 5th) and even did that without Mac.  Collegiate had 51 and Woodberry had 66.  Had FUMA and STAB each had one more runner, we would have logged 2 more victories to push our record to 100-17.  As such, we ended the season 98-17, plus another 60ish incomplete (4 runners or less) teams beaten by us.  We have also never lost a JV Prep League meet that we have attended (we did not run in it prior to 2016).  The meet stats are attached.

 

As this is the end of the season, I want to share a few final thoughts, many of which were shared at our end-of-season wrap-up last Thursday where I said a few words about our 7s and the coaches all presented the traditional 8th grade paper plate awards to all our 8th grade runners.  Although we as coaches try to look at each team every year with a different set of expectations and goals, I will admit that this year was tough to do that coming off of arguably our two best MS XC teams ever (with 2018 in the mix as well).  Due to the success of those teams, I did not know what to expect this year, especially with many of our 7s from last year's team gone (2 to other schools and 4 to other sports).  I want to credit our 8th graders for stepping up their game as leaders, particularly the 6 that returned from last year's team: Asa, Mac, Liam, Harvie, Arjun, and Nic.  I think Nic and Arjun, who spent much of last fall in the back of our pack, showed what the cumulative effects of running can do for you with each dropping substantial time across the 4 home meets, 2 Collegiate meets, and Pole Green (over 36:00 for Nic and over 17:00 for Arjun to be more exact!).  Harvie did not see those kinds of drops at the St. Cat's meets, but clearly made up for that later in the season and at other venues, literally inches from breaking 22:00.  We were going to be leaning on our other trio of 8s to do a bulk of the scoring for us and Asa, Mac, and Liam not only did that, but also provided great leadership at meets and at practice.  Seeing all of them under 21:00 was also exciting.  There is always a lot of unknown for our 7s and it also usually takes a bit of time for them to "buy in" with what we are doing here, something the veterans already understood from day one.  That being said, these 7s jumped right into the fold and, especially in the case of Grant, Charlie, and Avery, our veterans were perfectly fine with this trio being involved in the scoring, something our 8s did not really see much of as 7s.  After seeing all the fluctuation with essentially 4 different #1 guys early in the season, I was pleased to see everyone accepting of this as this is truly a mixed grade team, not a separate group of 7s and 8s.  When all was said and done, we ended up with a top 5 under 21:00 (19:19, 19:56, 20:00, 20:17, 20:52) and a 6th man not too far off at 21:08.  That is a pretty good team in my book and I think the win-loss record, states placing, and guys on all-time lists, is certainly proof of that.

 

Looking ahead to next year, we of course hope to see our 7 8th graders in action with the upper school team, continuing to chip away at their PRs.  And, we will of course hope all the 7th grade runners return next fall, whether it be our duo of sub-20:00 guys or the next Nic McDonnell who can drop gobs and gobs of time next fall with a little more indoor track and summer training under his belt.  With very little youth programming, unlike soccer and football, cross country is not the most known or glamorous sport out there, but I appreciate all of the boys who tried it out for the first time this year.  I hope you all enjoyed the simplistic approach of what you put into it is what you get out of that.  Seeing Rand be the Rand I was hoping to see and running in the 22s when he could have been mountain biking, McCoy sticking with it instead of trying to play football with more than half the grade, or seeing Grant manage his outside-of-running injuries to become our top runner were just some of the stories that could have certainly happened for other folks in the 7th grade.  I hope our 7th grade guys will make a pitch to some of their classmates to give this cross country thing a try next fall.  And if improvement isn't as big of a thing for them as it is for the coaches, just remind them that we have a record of 541-35 over the past nine years, so we do a lot of winning.