2016 WCAC Championship

The conference lucked out with some of the best weather conditions we've seen for the WCAC championship meet. I can only imagine how slow the times would have been had the weather been as nasty as some championship meets have been.

Unfortunately, we came into the most important meet of our season at less than 100% strength. Devin was out a few days this week with an illness and ran through a lot of congestion. Jacob, usually our number three runner when healthy missed a lot of time the last two weeks with a hip injury. At the back end of our varsity squad, Thomas was also running through a hip injury and Josh has been playing catch up ever since returning from a severe ankle sprain at the first meet of the season.

I'm very proud of those guys for pushing through and fighting for their teammates. I am disappointed that we did not meet our goal of finishing in the top three because that was an expectation I set for myself entering the season, but I am not disappointed in our guys by any means. This was a deep year for the conference and it was clear in the weeks leading up to this meet that we would be fighting a four-way battle to take that third spot. At less than 100%, that we finished that close to O'Connell and St. John's is something that we can take solace in.

I am excited for the coming years. We have one of the youngest teams in the conference so if we can keep this year's core of athletes together, and bring in more runners next year to support them, we will see ourselves move up in the conference sooner rather than later.

FYI, I am fairly certain the distance was 3.2 miles, but the official distance on the results is 3.11 miles, so they are officially considering it a 5k race.

Let's get to the race recaps.

Freshman Race

Here are the results for our athletes who ran in the freshman race. The number in front of each name signifies their overall place in the freshman race. I did not get mile splits this week:

2 Dominic Ximinies (Fr.) - 20:28

3 Anthony Perry (Fr.) - 20:29

30 Caleb Ghatt (Fr.) - 29:49

Regardless of the distance, that Dominic could run a PR on this course, and that Anthony came within three seconds of his own PR, is remarkable. Dominic fell heading into the final 100 meters of the race because he was unsure of how to navigate the flags marking the turn into the finishing stretch. He probably would have beaten Gonzaga's freshman who won the race, so Dominic was disappointed after his race. All things considered, his performance yesterday was remarkable.

I also understand that Dominic and Anthony went off course at one point, trusting what they saw some other runners do rather than our visits to the course and our pre-race course walk. Hopefully they will learn from that experience and not second guess themselves in the future, but that knowledge makes their performances all the more impressive.

I was not able to see Caleb out on the course except for at one spot less than a mile into the race, but he was very affected by the difficulty of the first half of the course and I do not think he could fully take advantage of the descents in the second half of the race.

Varsity B

Here are the results for our varsity B athletes. The number in front of each name signifies their overall place in the varsity B race. I did not get mile splits this week:

49 Westley Douglas (So.) - 21:55

74 Manuel Legaspi (So.) - 23:17

98 Andrew Byrd (Sr.) - 25:52

Westley has been fighting through a shin injury for nearly the entire season. It seemed to have cleared up a few weeks ago and then it came back. He was able to run through it pretty well last week but hills tend to be particularly tough on the shins and so I don't think he ever got into a rhythm on Saturday. I am looking forward to next season. If Westley can have a healthy year, I think he could be a varsity scorer.

Manuel ran 22:47 at Landon and since then has run 23:14 and 23:01. For him to remain in that area on this course was impressive. He has been running through a minor ankle injury for a few weeks that comes and goes. He told me after his race that he was able to get through almost the whole race pain-free, only feeling it coming down the hill exiting the woods to the finish area.

Andrew also managed to stay in the ballpark of the times he has been sitting at this season. Andrew is the kind of runner who has one speed for an entire race but he locks into that speed and maintains it from start to finish. I think yesterday was the first time I saw him kick and find another gear for the final 100 meters of a race and I loved it!

Varsity A

Here are the results for our varsity A athletes. The number in front of each name signifies their overall place in the varsity A race. I did not get mile splits this week:

15 Devin Smith (Fr.) - 19:01

17 Matthew Metz (Jr.) - 19:08

28 John Ahalt (Jr.) - 20:10

30 Ashby Ervin (So.) - 20:37

41 Jacob Keppler (Sr.) - 21:03

46 Thomas Parsons (Fr.) - 21:50

48 Josh Gatti (Sr.) - 22:01

I already talked about this race at the top of the recap so I'm not going to go into too many details. I will say I was second guessing myself all afternoon until I saw the official results because I worried that we might have been able to finish third had Dominic and Anthony run in the varsity race. As it turns out, it wouldn't have changed much for us. We would have scored 10 fewer points, which would only have cut in half the deficit to third place. However, interestingly enough, it would have given St. John's third place instead of Bishop O'Connell (O'Connell tied St. John's for points but their sixth man beat the sixth man for St. John's, giving them third and St. John's fourth). Considering it would not have moved us up in the standings, I am very glad that the two of them were able to earn medals in the freshman race.

Team Results

1. Good Counsel 25 points

2. Gonzaga 35 points

3. Bishop O'Connell 111 points (6th man: 37th)

4. St. John's 111 points (6th man: 38th)

5. DeMatha 131 points

6. St. Mary's Ryken 149 points

7. Bishop Ireton 194 points

8. Paul VI 196 points

9. Bishop McNamara 283 points

O'Connell loses a lot to graduation. Their top three finishers are all seniors and two of their top three Varsity B runners are seniors They will be the easiest team for us to pass from this year to next. Only one of Ryken's scorers on Saturday is a senior, but they were also missing their best runner. Fortunately for us, he is also a senior, so we'll have no excuse if we let them stay close next year. St. John's, however, is going to be good again next year and we will have our work cut out for us. Not a single runner on their varsity squad will graduate, which mean we have to be dedicated to our training over the summer if we hope to close that gap and challenge them for a top three spot at next year's championship. The good news is that our team is younger than theirs, and even our sophomores are new runners. Our freshmen and sophomores stand to make massive improvements heading to next season if they commit to begin their training before the 2017 season begins.

We do have one more meet on the schedule. Anyone on the team who does not compete in a winter sport is expected to compete at the Private School Championship in two weeks. Those who do compete in a winter sport should see me on Monday to let me know if they want to run at the meet and, if they do, whether their winter coach will allow them to.

I also need two or three guys to come to Open House next Sunday to be at the cross country table. I think one or two guys already told me they would plan to be there but I'll need confirmation of that by mid-week.