2018 Wildcat Invitational

Thank you to everyone for bearing with us on what has been our longest meet day so far this season. Thankfully it wasn't as early as a start as some of our other Saturdays have been, but especially on the day of the homecoming dance I know it was a hassle for some of you to pull off the logistics of picking you sons up from Williamsport or from DeMatha, get home, and then bring them back to the school.

I was at homecoming this evening and was happy to see so many of our athletes there enjoying themselves.

Without further ado, let's get to Saturday's results. In blue, I have noted all athletes who set a new PR (personal record) in the cross country 5k (3.1 mile) at the meet. For any athlete who made their high school cross country 5k debut, their time becomes their PR, and a blue asterisk (*) denotes that this was the first time they have run this distance in cross country. Additionally, in red, I have noted all athletes who set a new PCB (personal course best) for the Wildcat Invitational.

Varsity

Here are the results for our varsity athletes (99 total entries in the race). The number in front of each name signifies their overall place in the varsity race. In brackets are their first mile, second mile, and last 1.1 mile splits:

31 Thomas Parsons (Jr.) - 19:38.6 [(1) 5:53, (2) 6:32, (3.1) 7:14]

36 Hayward Smith-Cassidy (Jr.) - 20:08.9 [(1) 6:11, (2) 6:41, (3.1) 7:17] PCB by 13 seconds

37 James Hudson (So.) - 20:09.1 [(1) 6:08, (2) 6:44, (3.1) 7:17] PCB by 27 seconds

44 Jaiden Mosley (So.) - 20:29.0 [(1) 6:05, (2) 6:50, (3.1) 7:34] PR by 15 seconds

49 Langston Stovall (Fr.) - 20:43.2 [(1) 6:18, (2) 6:54, (3.1) 7:31]

50 Dawson Grogan (Fr.) - 20:44.8 [(1) 6:00, (2) 6:51, (3.1) 7:54]

61 Manuel Legaspi (Sr.) - 21:28.6 [(1) 6:41, (2) 7:02, (3.1) 7:46]

62 Tariq Lewis (Fr.) - 21:36.1 [(1) 6:29, (2) 7:19, (3.1) 7:48] PR by 36 seconds

67 Steven Camarano (So.) - 21:53.6 [(1) 6:12, (2) 7:42, (3.1) 8:00]

74 Ronald Rucker (Fr.) - 22:28.1 [(1) 6:39, (2) 7:27, (3.1) 8:22] PR by 10 seconds

In addition to setting a new course best, Hayward came the closest of anybody on our varsity squad to equaling his time at the WCAC Championship last season, which was 19:54. Each of our three athletes who set new personal bests in the 5k are new runners this year who will get our first look at that fast course down at Bull Run next week at the Glory Days Grill Invitational.

Team Results

1. Winters Mill 54 points

2. Williamsport 68 points

3. Boonsboro 79 points

...

8. DeMatha 196 points

...

12. Walkersville 343 points

I wasn't too happy after the race when I went to get the place cards our athletes were given by the race officials in the finish chute. I added up the top five scores and our total was in the 300s, which we have no business scoring at a meet like this. Thankfully it appears there were some mistakes concerning the cards that were handed out at the finish line and those mistakes were not reflected in the official results. Our top six athletes each received ribbons and while I still would have liked to see our score closer to a 125, I am okay with this result for reasons I will mention in my final thoughts.

Junior Varsity

Here are the results for our junior varsity athletes (45 total entries in the race). The number in front of each name signifies their overall place in the JV race. In brackets are their first mile, second mile, and last 1.1 mile splits:

6. Gavin Foran (So.) - 21:43.1 [(1) 6:25, (2) 7:32, (3.1) 7:46]

7. Westley Douglas (Sr.) - 22:00.8 [(1) 6:33, (2) 7:31, (3.1) 7:57]

10. Julius Gamble (So.) - 22:36.7 [(1) 6:51, (2) 7:43, (3.1) 8:03]

11. Ashby Ervin (Sr.) - 22:59.4 [(1) 6:47, (2) 7:41, (3.1) 8:31]

12. Keme Gbemiye-Etta (Sr.) - 22:59.7 [(1) 7:00, (2) 7:31, (3.1) 8:29]

13. Julius Haynes (Jr.) - 23:16.0 [(1) 7:29, (2) 7:50, (3.1) 7:57]*

14. London Bailey (Jr.) - 23:27.7 [(1) 7:29, (2) 7:51, (3.1) 8:08]

15. Cameron Polk (So.) - 23:43.4 [(1) 7:30, (2) 7:55, (3.1) 8:18]

18. Dominic Williams-Dzirasa (Jr.) - 24:21.5 [(1) 7:05, (2) 8:24, (3.1) 8:53] PR by 18 seconds

19. Sean Leonard (Fr.) - 24:24.3 [(1) 7:42, (2) 8:00, (3.1) 8:42]

20. Mathias Roy (Jr.) - 24:31.0 [(1) 7:37, (2) 8:12, (3.1) 8:42]

24. Caleb Ghatt (Jr.) - 25:19.4 [(1) 7:16, (2) 8:25, (3.1) 9:38] PCB by 5 minutes 7 seconds

27. Haroon Zaid (Fr.) - 26:06.0 [(1) 7:33, (2) 8:34, (3.1) 9:59]

28. Bodior Elliott (Jr.) - 26:13.1 [(1) 7:41, (2) 9:06, (3.1) 9:26]

30. James Carroll (So.) - 26:27.4 [(1) 8:04, (2) 8:47, (3.1) 9:36]

35. Jacob Robertson (Fr.) - 28:07.8 [(1) 7:55, (2) 9:16, (3.1) 10:57] PR by 16 seconds

40. Ryan Kasner (So.) - 30:19.7 [(1) 9:04, (2) 10:15, (3.1) 11:01] PCB by 5 seconds

41. Drew Robertson (Sr.) - 31:13.4 [(1) 8:54, (2) 10:37, (3.1) 11:42]

45. Ian Brown (Fr.) - 36:53.1 [(1) 10:24, (2) 12:00, (3.1) 14:29]

Sean was only about 12 seconds off his time set at Landon last week and was our closest JV athlete to setting a new PR besides Dominic and Jacob. Caleb has been pushing himself very hard all season and has been rewarded with huge improvements on his times from two seasons ago.

Gavin is still not quite back to where he normally is but knocked off a little more than a minute at Landon and another two minutes here at Wildcat from his time at the Howard County Invitational. Hopefully in another week or so he'll be back to his old self on the course. In the mean time, he has earned his spot back on varsity for Glory Days since I will be entering all freshmen in the freshman race. Because Langston and Dawson were among our top seven finishers at Wildcat, this will still count as an earned varsity spot for the two of them.

I also want to point out how impressed I was with Westley's race. He was a little more than a minute off the PR he set at Georgetown Prep two years ago, but this was his first race since the 2016 season and despite running with shin splints he fell just outside of our top 10 for the day.

Team Results

1. Winters Mill 29 points

2. DeMatha 46 points

3. Boonsboro 55 points

4. Saint James 110 points

Congrats to our JV boys on their second place finish. I was impressed with our pack running in this race, as I was in the varsity race with Hayward, James, and Jaiden, in particular.

Final Thoughts

While the course at Wildcat is generally faster than the one we ran at Landon, our athletes should keep in mind that we are training through these regular season meets. We certainly ramp up our workouts during our "bye weeks," but we aren't taking our feet off the gas by much during race weeks. Our end goal is the WCAC Championship. Last year we peaked perfectly as a team at the championship meet when every single athlete competing on Varsity and Varsity B set personal bests and four out of seven athletes in the freshman race set personal bests. Our goal is to replicate that result, so have faith in the process. It worked last year and I see no reason why it won't work again this year.

Next week we get a preview of our championship course in a huge invitational meet. Be aware of your surroundings. Take in as much as you can so that over the last three weeks of the season you can spend some time visualizing the course. It will be a long day as we will head out early so I can run in the open race (I believe Matthew Metz '18 and possibly John Ahalt '18 may also be there to run in this race) before the high school meet begins. All of our freshmen will be entered in the freshman race, our top seven non-freshmen will compete on varsity, and everyone else will compete in the JV race. I will have the schedule up early this week as we prepare for next weekend.

"It's not the will to win that matters - everyone has that. It's the will to prepare to win that matters." - Paul "Bear" Bryant