2016 Georgetown Prep Classic

The temperature was perfect for a cross country race Saturday, but the wind definitely factored into the results. Some of our athletes dealt with the wind fairly well and managed to post personal records. Others were definitely put a little off their game. The good news is that, after this meet, we've now competed in almost every kind of weather we can expect for this time of year, so we should be well prepared for whatever Mother Nature throws at us on Saturday.

Two of our athletes ran in the Open Race to kick off the meet. Five of our freshmen ran in the Freshman race and our other six athletes ran in the Unseeded Varsity race.

The first mile of the Prep course is pretty tough, with a significant hill roughly a quarter of a mile in and rolling hills throughout. Though I consider the first and second miles to be about the same in difficulty, most of our athletes ran significantly faster in the second mile of the race than they did in the first mile. This is a little unusual, but I'll talk to the guys and determine whether we need to change their strategy heading into championships from what they did this weekend.

Open Race

Here are the results for our athletes who ran in the open race. This race was not officially scored, so I do not have places for these athletes. In brackets are their first mile, second mile, and last 1.1 mile splits:

Manuel Legaspi (So.) - 23:01 [(1) 7:27, (2) 7:10, (3.1) 8:24]

Andrew Byrd (Sr.) - 24:30 [(1) 7:34, (2) 7:28, (3.1) 9:28]

Manuel was one of our athletes who ran much faster in his second mile than in the first. His missed setting a PR by just 15 seconds. His second two splits were actually faster than the same splits at Landon, where he set his PR.

Andrew not only set a season best by more than a minute, he bested his PR set at last year's Wildcat Invitational by 15 seconds. It was his most balanced race to date and I'm very proud of the way he ran.

Freshman

Here are the results for our freshmen. The number in front of each name signifies their overall place in the freshman race. In brackets are their first mile, second mile, and last 1.1 mile splits:

16 Dominic Ximinies (Fr.) - 20:36 [(1) 6:44, (2) 6:20, (3.1) 7:32]

17 Anthony Perry (Fr.) - 20:40 [(1) 6:43, (2) 6:20, (3.1) 7:37]

18 Thomas Parsons (Fr.) - 20:46 [(1) 6:51, (2) 6:08, (3.1) 7:47]

58 London Bailey (Fr.) - 26:14 [(1) 8:14, (2) 7:55, (3.1) 10:05]

61 Caleb Ghatt (Fr.) - 26:50 [(1) 8:22, (2) 8:00, (3.1) 10:28]

A different freshman led at each checkpoint for the race, with Anthony leading at the mile mark, Thomas leading at the two-mile mark, and Dominic finishing first among our athletes. I am very excited about the coming years with the young talent we have on the team.

Dominic set a PR by 30 seconds, running a very steady race. He ran his last mile and change nearly as fast as his first mile, so he definitely has plenty of room to improve before the season ends.

Anthony led our freshman cohort at the mile mark and was again just in front of Dominic at the next mile mark. He wasn't quite able to finish with Dominic, but he stayed close behind. Anthony has been dealing with a hip/upper hamstring injury for a fair amount of the season. He's done a phenomenal job of pushing through it and trusting our trainers when they say he can run through it without aggravating it.

I did not get a chance to talk to Thomas about his race yet, so I have yet to get a sense of his first mile and if something happened that affected his positioning. He did his best to make up for his slow first mile by running his second mile more than 40 seconds faster, but I think that did more harm than good as he was unable to stay with Dominic and Anthony through the final mile of the race.

London missed a lot of training time this season, dealing with some knee issues and then a pulled muscle in his upper back. Since returning he's basically been starting from scratch. Still, I'd like to see if we can work him back into the low 22s in time for the DC-MD Private School Championship in three weeks. He ran 22:08 at Covenant Life. That time at Georgetown Prep would have moved him up 20 places in the results.

Caleb also set a PR Saturday, besting his time from Landon by 20 seconds. It's been a lot of fun working with Caleb this season. He struggled with the mud at the Wildcat Invitational two weeks ago, so I wasn't sure how mentally prepared he would be for Georgetown Prep, but he bounced back in a big way, running 3 minutes faster than he did in Williamsport!

Freshman Team Results

1. Yorktown 34 points

2. St. Albans 61 points

3. Georgetown Prep 90 points

4. St. John's 108 points

5. DeMatha 129 points

6. Westminster 166 points

7. Glenelg 169 points

8. Edmund Burke 171 points

St. John's was able to edge us out, but I'm thrilled with how we stack up against their youth. They ran all their freshmen in that race. Devin ran in the varsity race for us (if he had run freshman, we could subtract 41 points from our score and finish in 3rd ahead of Georgetown Prep. And that's before considering where we already know London can be if he stays healthy. We have a great group of young runners and if we can keep them all together we will have a great shot at competing for a WCAC team title in the very near future.

Varsity

Here are the results for our varsity athletes. 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:

14 Devin Smith (Fr.) - 18:17 [(1) 5:34, (2) 5:41, (3.1) 7:02]

15 Matthew Metz (Jr.) - 18:21 [(1) 5:54, (2) 5:30, (3.1) 6:57]

36 Ashby Ervin (So.) - 19:16 [(1) 6:05, (2) 5:50, (3.1) 7:21]

39 John Ahalt (Jr.) - 19:20 [(1) 6:02, (2) 5:52, (3.1) 7:26]

67 Westley Douglas (So.) - 20:43 [(1) 6:21, (2) 6:21, (3.1) 8:01]

Jacob Keppler (Sr.) - DNF [(1) 6:01]

Devin was the fourth freshman in the unseeded varsity race (no freshmen ran in the seeded varsity). The top freshman time was 17:45, which is only one seconds faster than Devin's season best time. He caught a pretty significant cramp during the race, so we have to work on hydration this week so we can avoid these preventable issues at the championship meet.

Matthew said that he and some of the other guys had a lot of dirt blown into their faces when a particularly strong gust of wind hit them at some point during the race, and that seemed to affect several of the guys' breathing. He pushed through, though, and set a new season best time. His first mile was 20 seconds slower than his first mile at the Wildcat Invitational and his last 1.1 miles were 17 seconds slower, but he did a fantastic job of hitting the middle part of his race hard and that made up the difference.

Ashby ran a strong race, but was not quite able to match his time from Wildcat. John had a particularly rough race. He said his ankle, which he had twisted earlier in the week, felt fine during the race but "everything else feels bad." He's a strong, mentally tough runner, and he'll bounce back. In the mean time, by finishing with John, and in fact ahead of him, Ashby should feel confident in running with John at championships.

Westley told me after the race he had forgotten his inhaler, so his breathing was labored. But he still ran very well and set a PR by 13 seconds. He ran incredibly even for his first two miles and I know he's strong enough to close faster than he did. We just need to make sure he has his inhaler next week so he can breath more easily throughout his race.

Jacob was looking pretty strong at the mile mark. He was about 7 seconds behind Matthew, which is pretty typical for him at that point in the race. I don't know where he was when he stepped off the course a little past the 1.5-mile mark, but he told me after the race he felt like he could have pushed through without aggravating his hip injury. After talking to Adrienne today, I think he probably was right. However, I told him before the race that if his hip started bothering him I wanted him to step off the course as a precaution. The team needs Jacob for championships, so if he's going to push through an injury, that's the time to do it, not at a meet that ultimately will mean nothing next month.

Varsity Team Results

1. Gilman 67 points

2. Westminster 75 points

3. Wakefield 75 points

4. Washington Latin 156 points

5. St. Mary's Ryken 156 points

6. St. Mary's 164 points

7. Stonewall Jackson 165 points

8. DeMatha Catholic 166 points

9. Old Mill 189 points

10. Sandy Spring 260 points

11. Glenelg 278 points

12. Kiski 320 points

13. Covenant Life 366 points

14. Bishop McNamara 393 points

15. Maret 438 points

I don't know how much Jacob's hip would have affected his race if he had finished, but even if we conservatively said he would finish just behind John, that takes 17 points off our score and jumps us into 4th place. It doesn't bother me at all that St. Mary's Ryken finished ahead of us. They do have a stronger team than they did last year, but if our guys run to their potential next week they won't be in the picture.

What I was more concerned with was how St. John's performed in the seeded varsity race. They scored 122 points, which is quite a lot considering there were 45 fewer athletes competing in that race than in the unseeded varsity race. In fact, the unseeded race seemed to be more competitive overall than the seeded race was. However, the average finishing time for the top five St. John's athletes was 18:58 with a 1-5 spread of 1:28. The average finishing time for our varsity athletes was 19:12 with a 1-5 spread of 2:27. With Jacob both of those numbers do come down - our average finish would've been in that same ballpark and the 1-5 spread this week would've been very close to 1:00.

St. John's is going to be a tough team to beat next week, so we HAVE to make sure we're doing the little things to ensure we are properly prepared for the championship race. They will take advantage if we don't.

This week's practice schedule is different than previous weeks. We have no practice Monday (athletes are expected to see a trainer if they are dealing with any grade of injury, even a minor one. Tuesday will be a normal practice day but Wednesday we will be at DeMatha and Thursday we will be at Greenbelt Lake. There is no school on Friday, so we will talk about the meet after practice on Thursday.

"Running is the greatest metaphor for life, because you get out of it what you put into it." - Oprah Winfrey