2016 DC-MD Private School Championship

Saturday was a beautiful day in the low 50s, minimal wind and lots of sun. We arrived at the Agricultural History Farm Park in Derwood with seven athletes who continued their season beyond WCACs with the hope of running personal bests on an historically fast course.

Several of our athletes have moved on to their winter sports and so did not compete yesterday, but I was glad to be able to focus our attention on each athlete running his best race individually and not become hung up on the team result.

Unfortunately, we did not have as much success individually as I had hoped heading into the meet. We had one athlete run a season best, a few seconds off his PR, but nobody else came within 30 seconds of their personal bests. Though these results were not what I hoped they would be, I want to make sure I convey to everyone that I am proud of the efforts they made this season and I look forward to coaching you all again next year.

I won't spend too much time talking about yesterday's results, but there are some end-of-season notes everyone should make themselves aware of. Those will be at the end of this write up.

Varsity Race

Here are the results for our athletes who ran in the varsity race. The number in front of each name signifies their place in the large school division of the varsity race. In brackets are their splits at the 1-mile mark:

49 Matthew Metz (Jr.) - 18:14 [5:26]

67 John Ahalt (Jr.) - 19:27 [5:31]

70 Ashby Ervin (So.) - 19:43 [5:55]

76 Thomas Parsons (Fr.) - 20:57 [6:21]

79 Manuel Legaspi (So.) - 24:04 [7:03]

80 Caleb Ghatt (Fr.) - 32:00 [9:00]

I think I unintentionally sabotaged Manuel and Caleb yesterday. I chose to put both of them in the varsity race since I could put seven athletes in the race, but by leaving them with no one to run with I think they struggled to find the right pace for themselves. This is typical for young, inexperienced runners. I apologize to both Manuel and Caleb for putting them in that situation.

Matthew ran a season best time, seven seconds faster than his time at Georgetown Prep.

You'll notice that, though we brought seven athletes up to Derwood, only six results are listed. Senior Jacob Keppler, with permission from his hockey coach, chose to continue his season and run at the private school championship. He struggled through a hip injury during the latter part of the season and wanted to end his season on a higher note than his finish at WCACs. Jacob sprained his ankle after stepping on a root just past the half-mile mark of the course on Saturday. His ankle was very swollen when I saw it and the trainer on-site said it appeared to be a tendon sprain but hopefully will not cause him to miss much, if any, time from the hockey team. He will get in to see our trainers on Monday but told me Sunday morning that it still hurts a lot but the swelling has gone down since yesterday.

End of Season Notes:

To wrap things up and officially end the season, there are a few things we need to get done.

Uniforms

All uniforms must be washed and returned to me this week. Once all of the uniforms have been returned I will set a date for our team banquet. If any of our parents have preferences for the food, I am open to suggestions, but I think a potluck would be the best option.

End-of-Season Meetings

I would like to meet with each of our athletes individually before the spring sports season begins. For those athletes who will run winter and/or spring track, this is not a requirement as we will be talking throughout the season - that said, those athletes are certainly welcome to meet with me specifically about cross country if they choose to. But for all other returning cross country athletes, this is an important part of getting ourselves prepared for what we must do before the summer begins. For our seniors, it is a way to touch base in a way similar to senior exit interviews, which are a requirement for graduation from DeMatha.

Recruiting

I will be sending emails out to 8th grade students who have shadowed or visited our open house and are interested in cross country over the next week or so. I have a very large list of these students and hope to bring in an even bigger freshman class than we had this year. This is something only I can do. However, there is plenty that our athletes can do within the school. There are many students in the school who do not participate in a winter sports. Some of them compete during other seasons, some of them do not, but we need to talk up cross country and find ways to get some of these other students to come out. I have already spoken to a number of current freshmen who may come out next year. It is important that when we talk about cross country within the school that we do so in a positive way that will not impede our goal of increasing our numbers. With that in mind, if any of you have complaints about the season, or suggestions about how things might be done differently next season, these are things you should bring to my attention during our end-of-season individual meetings.

Spring Meetings

I plan to hold two separate spring interest meetings, one for returning athletes and one for new athletes. Like last year, this meeting would take place after the track season ends. I will get to you early in the spring with a specific date and time.

Questions

If you have any questions for me, please don't hesitate to bring them up. Hopefully I've covered everything I needed to here, but I'm happy to answer any questions related to wrapping up this season. As for anything that specifically has to do with next season, I am happy to hear your thoughts or suggestions, but questions about next season are best saved for the spring interest meeting as it is unlikely I will have many answers at this time.

Thank you!

Thank you again to everyone for this season. I had a blast working with all of you and hope to be here doing this for a very long time. Special thanks to Mr. Legaspi for providing water and snacks for the athletes at every meet and to all of our parents who came out to support their sons and the rest of the team this season. I was especially glad to see that we got, I believe, 100% parent attendance at the WCAC championship. I'm not sure what that number has been recently but I know when I was at DeMatha I had teammates whose parents could not make it to that meet. It means so much to our guys for their parents to be there at such an important race, so thank you all!