Saturday was a long day for the boys with some arriving at school at 7:30am and not arriving back there until about 6:00pm.  With the size of the meet, combined with the starter and timing gentlemen who the coaches have seen at some slower meets in the past, we ended up being there a bit longer than expected.  The good news is, other than the wind, the weather was nice as it was not too hot or cold and plenty of sunshine.  The length of the meet also helped increase the rest between events, which was good for many boys who were in the max of 4 events or in the case of three of our guys, a tough distance triple with the 4x8, 1600, and 3200.

 

Despite this length, there were still plenty of personal bests from the first running event at about 10:15am with 6 of the 8 runners in the 4x800 relay earning a best time and 5 of the 8 runners in the 4x400 relay earning a best time about 4:45pm.  There were also numerous personal bests between those events and even a few NEPRs.  Although we had 11 of our athletes in the max 4 events, it was the distance triple of 4x800, 1600, 3200 completed by Charlie Branch, Asa White, and Liam Dunn (who also did shot put!) who really had the big ask on Saturday, covering 3.5 miles worth of races.  Spurred on by his new shoes, Charlie ended up scoring in all 3 events, 2 big PRs in these events, and 2 (almost 3) elite performances, and one silver medal to go along with it.  The 4x800 relay team earned an elite performance to start the day, breaking 10:00 cumulatively.  Mac McClendon led off with a 3-second personal best with his first time ever under 2:30, Charlie followed it with a 5-second personal best, and Liam and Asa closed it out each with a slight PR.  Their cumulative time of 9:50 puts them 12th on the all-time STC list.  They are now 2 seconds from cracking the top 10 and 6 seconds from the 6th fastest time in STC MS history.  Charlie just missed a medal and elite in the 1600 with a very good 5:25, and somehow found the energy to run an aggressive 3200 from the gun and drop 14 seconds.  This lowered his already-elite performance from 11:51 to 11:37, now ranked 12th in STC MS history and about 5th or 6th among the best STC 7th grade times in the event.  He was already ranked 1st in the state for 7th graders in the 3200 (via searchable results on MileStat), so this just improved his lead for that accolade.  Our other elite performance came in the 200 where Tristan Litzenburg lowered his elite 200 time even more, now sitting 30th on the all-time STC MS list in that event.  Liam had a close call in the 3200 as he ran a blistering final 2 laps (800) to come within about a second of breaking the 12:00 barrier and earning his first individual elite performance.  Much like these two, Asa ran the distance triple and although did not PR in the 1600 and 3200, he ran his 3rd best 3200 ever and began the day lowering his team-leading 800 time into the 2:24s.  This 3200 was exciting as it was the only event we had 3 scorers and along with Charlie and Liam each dropping 14 seconds, saw Kyan Patel run his first 3200 ever, earning a sub-13:00 NEPR in his debut, while Arjun Anand ran a 25-second PR thanks to his consistency.  The 3200, combined with the 4x400 being the two final events, certainly showed how impressive the boys were on Saturday, fighting fatigue to earn those PRs.

 

We had 6 personal bests in the 100s and 200s, with Max Behrooz running each for the first time while Corbett also ran his first-ever 100.  We had 5 PRs in our middle distance events with the 400 and 800.  RJ Johnson got closer to breaking 1:00 in the 400 while Jack Bleecher had a 2nd 800 PR on the day after earning one in the 4x8 relay as well.  After a nice 8-second PR in his 1600, Jack Bodt came back and dropped a few seconds in his 800.  The relays were solid with both A and B teams scoring in the 4x8 and 4x4.  The 4x4 A team just missed "elite" by 2 seconds, en route to a bronze medal.  The 4x1 A team was also close to elite with their 52.99, 1 second from that 52.00 elite mark.  In the field events, PRs were hard to come by as all the throwers were using the lighter (high school girls) weights, and therefore cannot be compared to previous marks where boys high school weights.  That being said, Chris Rauchle was the lone field PR by about half a foot in his long jump.

 

In the score, we know coming to this meet will always be a challenge as some of these public school programs are tough and big.  They usually have close to 50 athletes for each gender and usually have a tryout process just to get on their team.  Several teams came this year that did not attend last year and a few returning teams did score slightly higher than they did last year, making it tough for St. Chris to land on the podium.  We did well for what we had, almost scoring in every running event from 100 to 3200 (1 slot off scoring - 9th in the 200), scoring both relays in 2 of the 3 relay events, and even squeaking out a few points in the long jump.  We had 15 top-8 (scoring) finishes with 3 10ths and 1 9th as close calls.  A few more PRs and 10 more points and we would have been in 3rd place.  At the end of the day, it was a good meet for us in a lot of different ways, and although we did not win, we still have plenty to celebrate from the meet.  A 29-4 record for the season is still pretty good too!