Season's Over · 4:36pm Oct 16th, 2015
135-1. Dagnabbit, Jaylen. We were so close to an undefeated season.
You can find results for the last three meets here (don't forget that the team you're looking for is LaSalle): Midwest Catholic Championships (varsity, JV), Firebird Invite (varsity, JV, open), Anna Invite (everyone)
You can find more detailed stuff after the break and also some bonus and actually related thoughts on Friendship Games.
Midwest Catholic Championships
This is normally a pretty competitive meet. Lots of the better teams in the state happen to be Catholic private schools, and a few random ones from neighboring states also show up (usually from West Virginia, if my memory is accurate). This year, however, the competition wasn't as good. Cleveland St. Ignatius, easily the favorite to win state this year and generally a top five team every year, was not here, and I can never remember them not being there. So instead, the top teams were us, Toledo St. John's, and St. X's JV (and assorted DII schools).
- Brad, Frank, and Nick run fantastic and lead the varsity to a 20 point stomp over St. John's.
- Handley continues to be one of the better position runners I've ever seen. He's always right with everyone else's 3rd and 4th man, making his relatively slow times (considering his training) mostly irrelevant. He'd like to run faster, but he's pretty happy with just doing his job as our 4th man.
- Cam's consistent, but he needs to be finishing closer to Handley if we're gonna make any noise come Regionals and State.
- Jaylen needs to be more consistently with Cam. He has all sorts of talent, and he's worked hard all season. There's no reason he shouldn't be with Cam every race.
- Crail got his first varsity appearance. He struggled a bit running with the big boys.
- If you remember last time, Jeff and Jason were two of the JVs that actually responded when I chewed group 2 out for going ridiculously slow. Their races times are getting for it.
- Hardig outta nowhere with a 20+ second drop down to 19:17. Spoiler alert: it doesn't last :(
- Weyer broke 20 for the first time. He's the 4th freshman to do so (which is better than what last year's freshmen can say; obviously this is only because I'm coaching, duh)
Firebird Invite
So Nick's taking the SAT, but it's just Elder, who we've already smashed, and Kings, who hasn't run well all year. Easy peasy, right?
- And it definitely starts off easy peasy. Brad and Frank go 1-2. Handley and Cam follow that up with solid races and the team is in position to win just as easily as expected.
- [insert a lot of scrolling here]
- See? This is what I was talking about earlier. Jaylen needs to be consistently with Cam, especially when someone's out, and he needs to score. We lost by only 2 points, and Jaylen is an 800 guy (he ran a 1:59 last year). There's no way any of these kids running in the 17s should out-kick him. But that's what happened here. Coach went ballistic.
- Shelton is struggling real bad now. After this meet, he moves down from group 1 and starts running with us to reduce mileage. I also tell him that next race, he's going out no faster than 5:30 for his first mile. No more of this 5:20 or faster and die nonsense.
- So Fairfield either goofed or showed up late, but they ran their varsity in the JV race. Their team is garbage, but their #1 is legit. He was chillin' the whole time.
- Crail looked pretty great. He woulda won the thing if Fairfield hadn't goofed, and that woulda been pretty sweet.
- Crase, on the other hand, looked pretty awful. If he can get his mental game together, he can easily run a low 17.
- Ever since I yelled at them that one Tuesday hill run, practice has been a lot better, and races are starting to get faster. Jason and Jeff are the best examples of this, Jason especially. Here's to breaking 18 next week.
- Story time: Towards the end of August, this short black kid shows up for practice. Never seen him before, no one seemed to know him, so I figured he was a freshman giving cross country a shot now that school's started. Turns out he's a transfer and he's actually a junior. At his old school, he thought he was a sprinter, so he'd never run much more than a mile before. His first day of practice was intervals. He was fast. Fast forward a month and a couple weeks, and he's about to run his first race. I'm really excited for it because the kid has ridiculous talent. He just goes and runs. Fast. He does great on intervals, and he handles long runs just fine. My only concern is that he goes out too fast.
And at the mile mark, he's sitting around 10th behind a big pack of kids from Beavercreek. At the two mile mark, he's in 3rd. With about 4-500 to go, he's in 4th, and some kid is gaining on him. With about 200 to go, this kid passes our transfer. Big mistake. Kyle took off, passed the kid back, and blew past 3rd and 2nd. 18:36 on a little more than a month of training and never having run long distance before is insane. Track is gonna be fun (Calling it now: He'll smash 2 in the 800).
- Connor is back on track with a 19:02. Here's to breaking 19 next week.
- Merk has his first good race of the year. 'Bout time, too.
- Mark is our 5th freshman to break 20, and he drops about a minute from last week's time.
- King Softy Jr's actually been putting in some work during practice, and he finally broke 20. If he keeps this up, he'll lose the title.
Anna Invite
Frank's out with a minor injury. He probably could run, but league meet is the next week, so he wants to make sure he's healthy for that.
- Anna's fast, yo. Brad ran a 16 flat. Nick broke 16:20. Handley broke 17 and also 16:30. This is our first fast course of the year, and it's ended up being a huge confidence boost to the team.
- THAT'S MORE LIKE IT. Jaylen figures out how to race just in time to get ready for league meet next week. This is the Jaylen we've been waiting for all year. I sure hope he sticks around.
- Cam continues to consistently run well. He's our 6th guy to break 17, and that's a great spot to be.
- THIS IS ALSO MORE LIKE IT. 'Bout time Crase ran well.
- Siemer and Crail both ran ~30 second PRs. It won't be quite good enough to get on varsity with Crase finally figuring out how to race, but we're starting to finally round into shape as a whole team.
- Heeeey, this old timer knows a thing or two about racing, it seems. Shelton stuck to the gameplan, ran a 5:30 first mile, and had his best race of the year. And more importantly, he said he felt pretty good the second and third miles. Now we start slowly picking it up that first mile, and he'll be close to 17 pretty quick.
- As we get closer to the postseason, coach is starting to figure out who's going to continue training with the team and get passes for Districts onwards. The first preliminary list had Jeff as the last man out. Jeff was not happy about this. Jeff answered and ran really well.
- Meanwhile, Kyle continues to display his stupid amount of talent. He's already under 18. I do not even. I cannot even.
- Jason is the newest member of the "I Got Out Kicked By Kyle" club. That club is getting real big.
- Once upon a time, King Softy was right behind Jason. Then Jason picked it up in practice and King Softy continued to be soft. So Jason got faster and King Softy got slower. However, like Jr., King Softy has finally picked it up some in practice. It showed in his best time of the year. He also dragged Merk along with him. Maybe the King will also lose his title.
- Apparently David stopped two different times during the race. This freshman trains at a ridiculously high level, but his racing game is all out of whack.
- Shoutouts to Weyer for being our 3rd freshman to break 19. Connor and Mark came real close, too. This might be our best group of freshmen since I was a freshman.
- I think Jr. has lost the title. He might still be soft, but he's put in some good work. There was a time where I didn't think he'd break 20 just because he wasn't trying hard enough. Now he's real close to breaking 19. Good stuff, Jaxson.
- Alright, for all of you people out there that think you can't run, I want you to take a look at Sean Feely. He's a freshman. He showed up the first day of practice, and he could barely make it a mile. On top of that, he looked awful. His form was pretty miserable, and he was just struggling. But he kept at it. Eventually, he was able to run 4-5 miles. It was never pretty, but he could do it. He kept working hard, and now he just broke 24. That's about 7:40-7:50 per mile. I don't wanna hear any excuses from anyone. If he can do it, and work at it, and keep going, you can too.
And with that, the season's over. We raced against 136 teams throughout the various invitationals and lost to only 1. We're currently ranked #17 in the state. Sitting there at #8 is league rival St. X. I think we can beat 'em, but it'll be close. It should be real exciting. I also think the JV can win, especially since we're running Crail in the JV race instead of the freshmen race. Apparently they've started running the varsity and JV together in the same race, so we wanna give Crail a shot to run against Crase for that last varsity spot. But as side effect, the JV team of Crail, Jeff, Jason, Kyle, and Shelton could actually win. I don't ever remember our JV winning, so it would be pretty sweet.
In any event, I think this is the first time since my junior year a team (not just our team, any team in the league) has had a realistic chance of beating St. X. They've been pretty dominant over the past five years, and it'd be nice if we were the ones to take 'em down. It's kind of a big deal to beat X.
Hey, that sounds a bit familiar, doesn't it?
So Friendship Games came out a couple weeks ago. I enjoyed the movie. The parts that kinda make me mad, though, were some of the reviews that have come of it. And it's not even a whole review. It's just the parts that go on about things like high school rivalries being "bullshit" or "completely pointless" or even saying that the games themselves (ignoring the magic portals and whatnot) weren't "high enough stakes." Now, I could see the argument where those aspects weren't well executed. But that wasn't the argument, at least from what it seemed to me. No, the argument was that those elements weren't good elements to have in the movie, and perhaps they just aren't even good elements in any movie. Because, again, they're "bullshit" and "completely pointless."
I dunno, man. I've now been to 7 GCL cross country and track league meets, and this fall and spring will be the 8th for each. I've been a competitor for 4 of each, a spectator+alumnus for 3, and now I'm about to go into 'em as a coach. The rivalries are intense. The stakes are high. The kids are excited and competitive. The atmosphere is electric. Some of my fondest memories are of winning the league meet in track my senior year or crossing the finish line ahead of all the X kids. I know the kids this year really wanna beat X. At least this year, it's similar to CHS wanting to beat Crystal Prep. The seniors on the team have been training for this moment for 4 years now. Thousands of miles, a whole hell of a lot of sweat, and even some blood along the way. The stakes are very real, and the rivalries drive them to run faster.
There is no "bullshit." This is not "completely pointless." And if you still think it is, I'd love to see you go tell Brad or Frank or Nick or Handley that what they're doing and what they've trained for is "bullshit" and "completely pointless."
It'd be like them telling you that watching a show for little girls is "gay."
That final line, though.
The problem is that bronies have become spoiled. We're old enough (on average) to have seen many of the greatest movies in existence. We listen to some of the greatest and most inspirational music ever made. We live in a time where overnight success (you can define that however you want) is not only entirely possible, but deceptively easy.
I'll bet most of those people calling interschool sports carnivals, events, meetups, with all the rivalries and competitions, have never been part of such a setting. I'm not an athlete by any means, but I do remember representing my school as a child against other schools in events like sprints, marathons, and swimming. I knew I wouldn't finish among the best, who I could pick by just their looks alone, but even so...
It was exhilarating. And that's just some friendly competition between a few neighbouring (fuck you, spelling, that word is correct) schools.
My point is that those naysayers who have become so jaded to apocalyptic, world-threatening events in movies are never going to be amused by something so "simple" as a school rivalry. But, as I've said on other blogs recently, they need to remember that they aren't the target demographic.
3474657
I'm not certain it's about demographics in the sense of age groups. Sports movies are great. Hoosiers, Remember the Titans, Glory Road, etc. I just think they weren't ready to have sports movie elements in Friendship Games and then didn't adjust to it when it happened.
FORDHAM PREP RAMS 4EVER WOOOOOOOOO
Sorry. Saw a blog about Catholic high school sports and felt a surge of high school pride
3474692
Nah, man. You gotta go all out.
LET'S GO BIG RED
Good to hear your runners are improving!
I'm a Senior and in my first year of Cross Country. Decided to do it just to keep myself in shape come track season (which I've only done for a single season, I'm new to running), but now I'm more hyped for Cross Country than Track. Most of this season I've been stuck in the mid 19's, depending on the difficulty of the course (which varies a lot where I live, some places are super flat and some are super hilly), so I was improving by little bits. I've been stuck as the 8th place runner on my team the whole season (lower division school than yours, our best runners are 17:20's at best) BUT last Saturday I felt super good and figured out how to race I guess? Crushed my previous 19:25 PR down to an 18 flat.
Now I'm worried because I don't know that I can ever repeat that, but I'm 4th fastest on Varsity now. And I have a race tomorrow in which I have to beat that time. Wat do
3475716
Getting down to 18 flat in your first year is pretty sweet.
For your next race, just remember this above all else: You know you can do it. You've done it before, so push yourself to do it again. Beyond that, if you're close to your #3, stick with him. If you're close to your #5, stick with him. Then you don't have to do as much work when it comes to trying to go that fast. Just running with them accomplishes that. Then, at around the 1.5-2 mile mark, if you're feeling good, pick up the pace. Challenge yourself that last mile and finish strong. If you're not feeling good, just stick with your #3/#5 for as long as you can and keep telling yourself that you can do it.
3476044
17:33 
A full 2 minutes better than my first race this season!
Thanks for the advice! Our coach told us today that the goal for Varsity was everyone under 18, which meant 5 people had to PR. Though we hadn't planned it beforehand, we ended up doing a Pack Attack (dunno if that's XC jargon or an invention of my school). All but our fastest 2 runners stuck together the whole way through. It totally worked. Everyone PR'd by like 30-45 seconds (and yes, this was a full 5k), and 5 of our 7 crossed the finish line within 10 seconds of each other. I ran about
Also, Andrew Hunter ran in the same race today. From what I heard, he scored this year's fastest 5k time yet in the nation at 14:20. He's basically a semi-local celebrity. A few of my team members got a picture with him, but I missed out
3477411
Ayyyyyyyyyy, sounds like you guys did pretty fantastic. You guys have a conference/league meet coming up soon? Or was this it, and now you're on to the postseason?
3477842
Still have conference, regionals, and states. But this was the last meet with the full team, and yesterday was the last full team practice. Now only Varsity and alternates (a total of 10 or 11 people) are required to go to practice. Counting guys and girls teams, we'll be down to about 20 people. Less than half the team. Might be a bit boring the next couple of weeks.
I don't mind too much. Today, in my first varsity race, I learned that too many people running together is a painful experience. I'm so used to being towards the front, where it's spread out a bit 0.0
3477880
Good luck, and hopefully you guys can make it to State! I remember running in the State meet, and it's an experience I'm really happy to have. And break 17, eh?