This meet is arguably the best cross country meet in the state every year, amassing close to 130 teams and the cream of the crop in terms of talent.  That being said, it is a great experience for the boys to be able to feel the "big meet" atmosphere and embrace all the challenges that go along with it.  Those challenges come in the way of better runners, stronger teams, managing nerves, handling slightly different start and finish procedures, and then of course added into the fold this year was the incorrect map of our course posted on the website for the meet.  This is also a tough meet for the boys in that a lot of their instruction from me is not about pace, but one of push, push, push and go with crowd, race for position, and enjoy the flatness.  When the boys get older and start running in high school meets for the prep league title or the state title, the importance of every position counting becomes that much more important.  Times get thrown out in these types of meets as you are just looking for a way to win.  This MileStat Invite is sort of like that for us in middle school as it usually provides the most challenge in terms of winning for our team.  That aside, improvement continues to be at the forefront of our goals, and Saturday was no different.

 

It is hard to fully compare improvement from last year as it was a different course this year (probably faster) and much cooler/drier/less humid this year.  Nevertheless, it was great to see five of our eight veterans drop around 1:00 or more off of last year's time.  Heading into this meet, my goal time for everyone was no slower than 1:15 behind their best Roslyn time.  I don't have a lot of results to back this number up, but based off of last year, this was my guess as the boys look for a way to set a goal time.  In this respect, 12 of our 16 boys hit their goal time, with some (Michael, George, and Matthew) beating their goal time by over 1:00.  In terms of a mile pace comparison (which we use as our main comparison from meet to meet), I looked at our FUMA mile pace as it was a longer, cooler race than our hilly, 85-degree Roslyn races.  In that FUMA mile pace comparison, we had 11 out of 13 runners have a faster pace this past Saturday.  The goal then, at Collegiate on 10/24, would be to beat this mile pace.

 

Macon Moring once again led the way for the Saints as he was the only STC runner to crack the 15:00 barrier.  And, his time of 14:54 was just a smidge under 6:00 mile pace, which is a pretty cool pace to hit for a cross country race.  We proceeded to put 3 more runners under 16:00 with Ford Clark and Jack Parker earning medals for their top-15 finishes.  Ethan Smith was one slot out of the medals in 16th place.  I already briefly mentioned the improvement of three of our runners in a time sense, and that improvement was also backed up by how they compared to their teammates on Saturday.  After being almost 3:00 behind Jeffrey Mitchell in the first Roslyn meet, George Beck was only 20 seconds behind him on Saturday (not to take away from Jeffrey who dropped 47 seconds from last year).  Michael Jimenez also vaulted several team positions into the 12th spot for us.  He was our 16th man at the first Roslyn meet and actually beat his first Roslyn meet time by 1:30 on this .25 mile longer course!  Matthew Caudill also experienced that sort of situation as he beat his first Roslyn time by over 1:00 on the longer course this past weekend.  He too inched closer to teammates who were further in front of him when the season started.  And finally, in general, it was great to see Evan Fisher back out there after missing the last two meets and to have all 16 of our runners cross the finish line.

 

In terms of the score, we always know going into this meet that it is going to be tough.  We are likely one of the best middle school cross country teams in the state, so we should be going to tough meets and challenging ourselves.  After taking third at this meet last year, the boys seemed super-focused on beating Rappahannock and Robious this year.  When we towed the line, Robious looked to be the bigger-sized team, so they worried me the most.  Nevertheless, in the back of my mind, I felt like we had a really good shot at winning.  It didn't turn out that way, which I know was a little surprising to the boys.  It certainly was close though (STC 48 to Robious 45).  In fact, we actually had a faster average time among our top 5 than Robious, which was like a small victory for us.  I think it was a good reminder for us that we are not invincible and that we need to keep working and be the best team we can be.  At the same time, a loss can sting for a bit, and a 3-point loss can sting a bit more than the 20 points Robious beat us by last year.  I referenced the importance of every finish place earlier and this was a great example for us.  And, I point this out solely for learning purposes, NOT to point fingers and blame people for a loss.  At the end of the day, win/loss is not as important as improving and learning.  Although we lost 48 to 45, a 43 to 46 win was likely attainable on Saturday.  If our top 5 runners (the scoring runners) each ran about a half of a second faster, we would have edged out 5 runners to lower our score to 43, and one of those was a Robious top-5 runner, so their score would have gone up to 46 points.  However, in all 5 close-calls, we were edged out by the other runners.  This close-call experience may pop up again at some point in everyone's running career, so I hope this will help the boys dig down and end up on the other side of those close calls.