2023 Chesapeake Invitational

I was very nervous mid-week that inclement weather might prevent this meet from taking place or, even more frustratingly, might force the meet to end before the JV race (happened at the 2017 Seahawk Invitational) or in the middle of the JV race (happened a week later at the 2017 Woodward Relays).

Thankfully the rain held off until we were about a mile from school on our return trip to campus. It was certainly warm (I'm convinced my Apple Watch was lying about it still being below 80 degrees as the JV athletes completed their warmup), but the conditions were ideal for fast times and we had plenty of them.

As always, 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. Additionally, in red, I have noted all athletes who set a new SB (season best), but not PR, in the cross country 5k. For our returning athletes who competed in this meet last year, if they ran faster today I've included in silver their new PCB (personal course best) for the Chesapeake High School 5k course.

Varsity

Here are the results for our varsity athletes (130 total finishers 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:

5 Sayid Shakur (Sr.) - 16:49.81 [(1) 5:18, (2) 5:28, (3.1) 6:04] PCB by 15 seconds
10 Chase Lopez (Sr.) - 17:17.21 [(1) 5:29, (2) 5:46, (3.1) 6:02] PR by 1 minute 8 seconds
18 Tarik Harris Jr. (Sr.) - 17:54.97 [(1) 5:23, (2) 5:51, (3.1) 6:41] SB by 0.1 second
30 Jalen Neptune (Jr.) - 18:19.63 [(1) 5:54, (2) 5:58, (3.1) 6:28] SB by 59 seconds
34 Graham Fenn (Sr.) - 18:30.83 [(1) 5:42, (2) 6:04, (3.1) 6:45] SB by 12 seconds
41 Roman Zentek (So.) - 18:44.77 [(1) 5:58, (2) 6:13, (3.1) 6:34] PR by 16 seconds PCB by 58 seconds
53 Brandon Smoot (Jr.) - 19:02.71 [(1) 6:02, (2) 6:21, (3.1) 6:40] PR by 1 minute 12 seconds PCB by 1 minute 50 seconds
54 Daden Grogan (Jr.) - 19:02.75 [(1) 5:54, (2) 6:15, (3.1) 6:54] SB by 13 seconds
70 Maxwell Ellison (Jr.) - 19:30.43 [(1) 6:15, (2) 6:15, (3.1) 7:00] PR by 1 minute 29 seconds
101 William Jackson (Jr.) - 20:37.30 [(1) 6:36, (2) 6:41, (3.1) 7:20] SB by 1 minute 19 seconds

Congratulations first and foremost to the four athletes in the varsity race who ran new PRs in the 5k today! Chase and Maxwell are in their first season running with us and they've already dropped a lot of time since the start of the season.

I know Roman was thrilled to break 19 minutes. After running 19:01 at Skip Grant last year and being unable to break that mark at WCACs, he had to wait a while. But this is a huge milestone for him! Brandon ran really well last week and took an even bigger step forward this week.

I do want to note that while neither of them set new PRs today, Sayid and Jalen were both less than 10 seconds off their career best times so I suspect when we go to Glory Days at the end of the month (our old WCAC Championship course), they should both run massive PRs.

Everybody in this race ran their fastest time of the season (it was Sayid's first race of the year with us), which is really impressive. In particular, I'm really proud of Daden's effort today. He's been dealing with some pain in his ankles this week and he gutted through today's race to a photo-finish with our 7th man and an improvement on last week's race.

Team Results

1. Arundel 54 points
2. DeMatha 94 points
3. South River 135 points
4. Spalding 148 points
5. Leonardtown 154 points
6. Good Counsel 155 points
...
15. St. Mary's Ryken 390 points

I'll start by saying congratulations. In a pretty competitive race, we were one of just two teams to keep our score to single digits. For that we should definitely be proud, but we also have to take a dose of reality with our celebration.

We have a couple guys in our top five who were well off their times from this race last year, so this wasn't the best performance we could have put together from a scoring standpoint. Whether it would have made up that 40-point gap is up in the air. It would have given us about 34 fewer points, so it would come down to how many points those changes would add to Arundel's score.

In any case, whatever contributed to those times regressing from last season is something we can't go back and fix now. All we can do is move forward and improve from where we are now and hope that it will be enough by season's end.

Junior Varsity

Here are the results for our junior varsity athletes (154 total finishers 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:

14 Phillip Marshall II (Fr.) - 20:40.42 [(1) 6:40, (2) 6:50, (3.1) 7:10] PR by 44 seconds
23 William Herman (So.) - 21:25.49 [(1) 6:50, (2) 7:21, (3.1) 7:14] PR by 0.6 seconds PCB by 52 seconds
25 Nicholas Berry (So.) - 21:31.26 [(1) 6:16, (2) 7:18, (3.1) 7:57] SB by 1 minute 40 seconds
28 Don DeRocha Jr. (So.) - 21:40.23 [(1) 6:49, (2) 6:56, (3.1) 7:55]
36 Jesse Holland III (So.) - 21:55.19 [(1) 6:50, (2) 7:22, (3.1) 7:43] SB by 1 minute 31 seconds
51 Joseph LeGloahec (So.) - 22:22.52 [(1) 7:06, (2) 7:24, (3.1) 7:53] PR by 2 minutes 1 seconds PCB by 3 minutes 53 seconds
62 Arvin Mirchandani (Fr.) - 22:56.08 [(1) 6:28, (2) 8:22, (3.1) 8:06]
64 Cameron Lamb (So.) - 23:05.17 [(1) 7:07, (2) 7:32, (3.1) 8:26] SB by 1 minute 9 seconds
67 Ryan Pickett (So.) - 23:17.64 [(1) 7:04, (2) 7:36, (3.1) 8:38] PR by 56 seconds
71 Brendan Dougherty (Jr.) - 23:21.27 [(1) 7:06, (2) 7:34, (3.1) 8:41] SB by 50 seconds
79 Andrew Righi (Sr.) - 23:47.57 [(1) 7:41, (2) 7:55, (3.1) 8:12] SB by 27 seconds
81 Renaud Williams (Fr.) - 23:49.07 [(1) 7:51, (2) 7:50, (3.1) 8:08] PR by 4 minutes 15 seconds
82 Peter Brown (Sr.) - 23:51.93 [(1) 7:41, (2) 7:54, (3.1) 8:17] SB by 1 minute 45 seconds
92 Tyson Woods (So.) - 24:32.57 [(1) 7:44, (2) 7:53, (3.1) 8:56] PR by 4 minutes
96 Julian Maring (Fr.) - 24:39.04 [(1) 7:57, (2) 8:08, (3.1) 8:34]
101 Aleko Rodousakis (Jr.) - 24:44.39 [(1) 7:42, (2) 8:09, (3.1) 8:54] PR by 3 minutes 49 seconds
112 Daniel Traves (So.) - 25:44.30 [(1) 7:44, (2) 8:29, (3.1) 9:31] SB by 5 minutes 3 seconds
122 Xavier Raymond (So.) - 26:22.87 [(1) 7:29, (2) 8:51, (3.1) 10:03]
129 Carter Leecost (Jr.) - 27:08.79 [(1) 8:28, (2) 9:10, (3.1) 9:31] PR & PCB by 28 seconds
136 Alexander Davis (So.) - 27:32.06 [(1) 7:34, (2) 9:14, (3.1) 10:44] PR by 5 minutes 17 seconds
142 Ronald Thurston Jr. (Fr.) - 28:51.10 [(1) 8:24, (2) 9:48, (3.1) 10:39]
144 Jesse Kliman (So.) - 29:51.26 [(1) 8:16, (2) 10:10, (3.1) 11:25] PR by 4 minutes 8 seconds
146 Elliott Kramer (So.) - 30:08.68 [(1) 8:04, (2) 10:13, (3.1) 11:52] PR by 4 minutes 25 seconds
152 Devin Lewis (Jr.) - 33:24.62 [(1) 9:17, (2) 11:53, (3.1) 12:15] SB by 3 minutes 55 seconds PCB by 49 seconds
Caleb Garcia Jr. (Jr.) - DNF [(1) 8:16, (2) 12:14]

It was a packed race for us, so I don't have the space or time to shout out every athlete here but I'll talk about a few performances that stood out to me.

Firstly, congratulations to Don, Arvin, Julian, and RJ on running their first races for DeMatha! Don did fantastic and earned himself a spot on our "C" relay team for next week! Arvin knows he started way too fast going out with the leaders through the first half-mile. He did a nice job to regroup, though, and completed the last 1.1 miles faster than his second mile.

Phillip did a great job today. After getting out really fast last week and struggling through the second half of his 2-mile at Trials of Miles, he stayed under control and ran a very balanced race today, keeping is pace consistent through each segment.

I'm not sure if it's causal or purely coincidental, but another athlete who impressed me with his balanced pacing through today's race was Phillip's classmate who he shared the course with last week. Renaud ran identical splits for his first two miles and his average pace through the last segment was about 30 seconds/mile faster. Very impressive!

While he did not run last week's 2-mile freshman race, I do want to point out that Julian also ran remarkably consistent splits. Maybe it's just a freshman thing; keep it up!

Joseph just keeps hitting new PRs. If I'm honest, I think it would be very difficult for him to do it again if Glory Days was next week, but the good news is he doesn't run another 5k until the 30th, and Glory Days is a pretty PR-friendly course, so he should feel very confident that he can keep his streak alive for at least one more race. In the mean time, he's earned a spot for The RVA Relays as William Jackson's replacement.

I was really glad to see Daniel back in practice on Tuesday after a really nasty ankle injury last Saturday in the open race. Thankfully ankle injuries can sometimes be a lot less sever than they appear and that seems to have been the case for him. He ran very well today.

Alex ran that open race with Daniel last week and today he was very focused on breaking the 30-minute mark for the first time. He needs to keep his first mile a little more under control so that the second and third miles aren't quite so painful, but after averaging 11:52/mile for the last 2.1 miles of last week's race, he kept both of his final two segments more than a minute faster than that mark. He was not a happy camper, but he pushed through and was rewarded with a huge PR!

Congratulations are also in order to Jesse Kliman and to Elliott. While Elliott did not officially break the 30-minute mark, he came extraordinarily close considering two things going against him and most of his teammates: (1) all of them had to sit around in the heat for an extended period of time after already getting through most of their warmup before we knew about the delayed start of the girls JV race; and (2) he was one of the athletes who started near the back of our line in a very narrow box where we could only start about three athletes in each row. If not for those two things, I am confident he would have broken 30 so I am giving him that mark.

Two quick notes regarding near-milestones: Nick was just about 20 seconds off his PR and Jesse Holland was within five seconds of his time on this course last year.

Team Results

1. Leonardtown 79 points
2. South River 97 points
3. Chesapeake 104 points
4. Jackson-Reed 113 points
5. DeMatha 126 points
...
10. Good Counsel 243 points
...
12. St. Mary's Ryken 281 points
...
14. Queen Anne's County 412 points

I'm pretty sure I mention this every year. We could have gamed the system a bit, just run seven athletes on varsity, and performed even better in the JV standings if William Jackson, Max, and either Brandon or Daden ran in this race. The fact that we were able to place among the top five teams without doing so goes to show the incredible depth this team has. Well done!

Final Thoughts

This was a very challenging week for us to deal with the heat. I saw a few athletes really struggling at the finish line. Dehydration can be a factor during and after every race, but I suspect that many athletes also were unable to properly rehydrate after dehydrating themselves every day this week.

I think we made the right decisions to prioritize our health and safety this week. You all handled today very well. I know we were all uncomfortable and were not shy in saying so, but when it was time to get on the line and race, you all focused on the task at hand. And because we made adjustments to reduce our risk of heavy dehydration, I think we will be much better prepared for a great week of training as we get to enjoy milder temperatures.

Get some rest this weekend, focus on your hydration, do some light stretching, and get your homework done. We're down to just seven weeks left before our conference championship!

"I don't focus on what I'm up against. I focus on my goals and I try to ignore the rest." - Venus Williams