As I mentioned in my previous email, Coach Cross and his wife were part of the senior night festivities before the meet, honoring their son Theo.  I mentioned that Theo was the former middle school record holder in the 1000 and still sits on the board as 3rd best.  This may come as a surprise given that he is a 41-foot shot putter and 113-foot discus thrower for the Varsity.  This senior recognition meant a lot to me today too.  When I started at St. Chris in the fall of 2006, Mr. Cross' oldest son Philip was in 4th grade.  He used to walk home past the track most days and if the cross country team was on the track, he would throw down his backpack and instrument and jump right in the interval workout or fartlek.  He even had mile time trial results from 3rd-5th grade.  I couldn't wait until this kid was in middle school.  After setting the 6th grade PE mile record in 2008-2009, he did cross country and track in 2009-2010 and also ended with the 7th grade 1600 record at the time and the middle school record in the 1600 as well in 2011.  Philip was really the first "fast" distance guy I experienced as a middle school coach at STC and for many years to come was the person I compared everyone to.  He was also a contributor to the beginning of the white sunglasses challenge (breaking 5:00 in the 1600 in middle school).  It took 11 years for someone to knock of Phlip's 6th grade PE time, 7 years for his 7th grade time to go down, and 4 years for someone to finally get the white sunglasses and for Philip's record for middle school to go down.  He still ranks 10th all-time in the 1600, some 13 years after he ran his 5:05.  Coach Cross has been a great supporter of track and cross country, so Theo's graduation is a bit of an end of a 15-year era of Cross boys doing track and cross country at the school.  Luckily for us, Coach Cross has shifted to coaching track in recent years and we are lucky to have him!

 

I set up this history to, one, pay homage to Mr. Cross and his children for their contributions to the middle school track/xc teams, and two, as a segue to an historic night for the middle school team.  Going into our first high school meet of the year (the late March one we had scheduled was rained out), I could tell there were some extra nerves for the boys.  On top of that, we lifted the day before the meet for the first time all season and also competed in our hottest meet of the year.  Despite all this against us, the training the boys have been putting in, the streamlined focus of 1 event for most, and the desire to look good around the high schoolers certainly propelled us to some great results tonight.  The PR train was running on all cylinders today with 21 personal bests across 25 individual running entries.  Wow!  That is 5/5 in the 100, 6/6 in the 200 with 3 guys dropping about 1-second or more, 2/4 in the 400 with a pair of almost 2-second drops, 4/5 in the 800 with those 4 guys dropping 5-7 seconds each (Langdon, Adam, Chris, Jack), and 5/5 in the 1600 with some big drops of 12, 11, 8, 5, and 2.  The longer the race, the more the heat typically affects the runners, but based on those PR numbers, especially in the 800 and 1600, I say bring on the heat!

 

Historically, we rattled off 7 elite performances, one of which was also the 3rd best 7th grade time ever in the event and another 7th grader cracking the sub-1:05 400 7th grade list.  The biggest news from the elite performance market was that the 4x100 relay team of Aedan Imbert, Brendan Cosby, RJ Johnson, and Tristan Litzenburg set a NEW MIDDLE SCHOOL RECORD!  It was close, but they beat the old 4x100 relay record, set last year, by .11 seconds.  Once again, the handoffs looked superb, which made the difference in getting the record or just missing out on it.  RJ, Tristan, and Aedan each lowered their elite status in the 200, now moving into 5th (RJ), tied-12th (Tristan), and 20th (Aedan) on the STC all-time list.  We also had a trio of elite performances in the 1600.  Liam Dunn had a thunderous final lap to win the first heat of the 1600 in a huge PR of over 12 seconds, earning his first individual elite performance ever!  Charlie Branch earned his 2nd elite mark in the 1600 with his 11.6 second drop, adding to his 3200 elite performance earlier in the season.  His 5:11.86 now ranks 3rd fastest all-time for 7th grade, just ahead of the aforementioned Philip Cross who ran 5:12 in 7th grade.  Asa, who had already earned elite status in the 1600 earlier this year, dropped 8.5 seconds, now just above that 5:10 barrier.  Asa, Charlie, and Liam now rank 15th, 16th, and 28th, respectively, on the STC middle school all-time list for the 1600.  This gives these three great momentum into their 3200 this Saturday.  We of course were not keeping score in this meet, going against high schoolers, so it was great to see the boys really focus in on an event or two and execute their race plans to get personal bests.  Clearly it worked given the 84% PR rate (21/25).

 

The boys are certainly carrying some great momentum into Saturday's distance meet, and our final meet next Friday, as we look for another big percentage of personal bests in these meets.  Keep plugging away each day, boys.  Clearly the training is working and we want to keep things going for a few more weeks as we close out the season.