2021 Eagle Invitational

What a day! I've been excited for this day ever since I finalized our schedule for this season because it was the first time that the entire team would be running in a traditional meet; turns out there was a lot more to be excited about for this one.

Leading up to this race, I mistakenly thought we hadn't attended this meet before; but I quickly realized that wasn't the case when we arrived and Centennial's campus looked astonishingly familiar. We attended this meet, at the time titled the Howard County Invitational, back in 2018 when our current seniors were freshmen. That year, we had pretty sloppy conditions, with muddy patches throughout the course. Today, the conditions couldn't have been much better. The course was almost entirely dry and it made from some very fast times.

Now, in the lead-up to the meet, the advertised distance for the race was 5,000 meters, the standard distance for high school cross country. Today's course was actually just short of that at 3 miles even, as I confirmed with Centennial's coaches before we left the course.

With that in mind, the times below are for the cross country 3-mile, which most of our athletes have never run before. We don't attend very many meets with this distance, so very few if any of our athletes have an innate sense of the difference between the two. So while we won't have very many official PRs today - this will be the PR for almost every one of our athletes (if not all of them) - I will also include for each athlete what their converted 5k time is. The way this will be designated is by a bold CT (Converted Time). If that time would be a PR or a season best, while it is not official, I still designate those as Virtual PRs or Virtual SBs, and of course for the few athletes who ran this course back in 2018, I'll designate PCBs (personal course bests) where applicable.

Varsity

Here are the results for our varsity athletes (185 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 third mile splits:

15 Jayden Keels (Jr.) - 16:36.6 [(1) 5:23, (2) 5:53, (3) 5:20] CT-17:14 Virtual PR by 32 seconds

21 Sayid Shakur (So.) - 17:12.3 [(1) 5:40, (2) 5:58, (3) 5:34] CT-17:51 Virtual PR by 46 seconds

40 Christopher Toomer (Jr.) - 17:49.3 [(1) 5:55, (2) 6:12, (3) 5:42] CT-18:28 Virtual PR by 36 seconds

42 Ian Parsons (Jr.) - 17:56.4 [(1) 5:48, (2) 6:11, (3) 5:57] CT-18:37 Virtual PR by 40 seconds

52 Michael Metz (Jr.) - 18:10.9 [(1) 5:56, (2) 6:16, (3) 5:59] CT-18:52 Virtual PR by 24 seconds

109 Tariq Lewis (Sr.) - 19:33.2 [(1) 5:57, (2) 6:49, (3) 6:47] PR & PCB by 2 min 29 sec CT-20:17 Virtual SB by 22 sec

A big congratulations to Jayden Keels for leading us with a 15th place finish, good enough for a medal. He had to head out before the awards ceremony but he'll get his medal this week. Not only did Jayden set a massive virtual PR, he ran the course (albeit in better conditions) 2 minutes and 39 seconds faster than our top runner at this meet in 2018, Thomas Parsons '20.

It's hard to single anybody out beyond Jayden because everybody ran so well. For reference back to 2018, there were fewer entries in the varsity race (167 in 2018 vs 185 today) and there were 21 teams that competed in both years. Our top finisher in 2018 placed 101st. Today we placed five, and nearly six, athletes ahead of that position. Three years ago we placed dead last, 21st place, with 592 points in the event; and today...

Team Results

1. Centennial 86 points

2. River Hill 119 points

3. DeMatha 167 points

4. Mount Hebron 167 points

5. Atholton 171 points

6. Reservoir 186 points

7. Liberty 191 points

8. Oakdale 199 points

9. South River 230 points

10. Glenelg 290 points

...

21. South Carroll 590 points

For those of you who are new to the sport, this is a great time for a quick lesson on team scoring in cross country. Essentially, whatever place you finish in is the score you contribute to your team. Once the race is over, you add the scores for the first five finishers per team.

Now, there are a couple of caveats. Some teams may not have five runners, and so don't qualify to compete as a team. In that event, those runners' places are skipped in the scoring (e.g., if a runner on such a team places 10th, then the next runner to finish after him, who is competing for a complete team, would get 10 points). Additionally, in races like this one where teams were allowed to enter ten athletes instead of the traditional seven for varsity, anybody beyond a team's seventh runner is skipped in the scoring (e.g., if a team's eighth runner finishes in a place where he would have earned 108 points, the next runner to finish, who is competing for a complete team and is among his team's top seven finishers, would earn 108 points).

That's a bit wordy and it might take a couple times through to really understand it fully, but hopefully the examples are helpful.

Now, there is one other important aspect to team scoring in cross country that is particularly important to us today. You may have noticed that we have the exact same score as Mount Hebron, and yet it doesn't say T3 next to our names to indicate a tie. We finished third and they finished fourth.

We can thank our senior captain, Tariq Lewis, for that. In the event that the combined scores of two teams' first five runners are the same, the tiebreaker is whichever team's sixth runner finishes first. In this case, Tariq finished six places and ten seconds ahead of Mount Hebron's sixth finisher.

We'll get back to a few other notes about our varsity athletes from today's meet, but first let's move on to our other two races.

Fresh/Soph

Here are the results for our Frosh athletes (188 total entries in the race). The number in front of each name signifies their overall place in the Fresh/Soph race. In brackets are their first mile, second mile, and third mile splits:

23 Hayden Walsh (Fr.) - 19:33.1 [(1) 6:06, (2) 6:56, (3) 6:31] CT-20:17 Virtual PR by 49 seconds

24 Jalen Neptune (Fr.) - 19:35.2 [(1) 5:52, (2) 6:52, (3) 6:51] CT-20:19

59 William Jackson (Fr.) - 21:09.4 [(1) 6:20, (2) 7:22, (3) 7:27] CT-21:57 Virtual PR by 35 seconds

98 Isaias Blandino (Fr.) - 22:57.5 [(1) 6:44, (2) 7:55, (3) 8:19] CT-23:49 Virtual PR by 3 minutes 54 seconds

149 Peter Brown (So.) - 26:06.5 [(1) 8:02, (2) 9:14, (3) 8:51] CT-27:06 Virtual PR by 50 seconds

162 Brendan Dougherty (Fr.) - 27:25.1 [(1) 8:21, (2) 9:41, (3) 9:23] CT-28:27

168 Carter Leecost (Fr.) - 28:01.3 [(1) 7:56, (2) 10:07, (3) 9:58] CT-29:05 Virtual PR by 2 minutes 44 seconds

178 Anthony Bardonille (So.) - 31:07.2 [(1) 9:07, (2) 11:10, (3) 10:50] CT-32:18

Some great work from our frosh boys. Only Peter has high school cross country experience and his was a very limited one; a few makeshift time trials on the parkrun course and two races on Holy Cross's campus last fall. Our guys are quickly acclimating to the intensity and volume of our training plan.

That said, injury risks are inherently higher for younger and/or inexperienced athletes, so continue to be mindful of your bodies. Jalen had a bit of a flareup with a minor hip injury that was bothering him earlier in the season. Hopefully it's nothing major, as was the case before, but we'll want to keep a close eye on it. Hayden has come on very strong since recovering from some pain in his ankle a few weeks back. And Isaias, who twisted his ankle pretty badly just nine days ago and had to sit out of the Woodward Relays, appears to be at full strength and took off a huge chunk of time from his parkrun performance two weeks ago.

Carter was very impressive today. He came through the mile ahead of both Peter and Brendan, and though he fell back behind both he was very much in control of himself over the final two miles and would have easily cleared 30 minutes on a full 5k course.

Team Results

1. Marriotts Ridge 69 points

2. River Hill 78 points

3. Centennial 85 points

4. Mount Hebron 154 points

5. Atholton 168 points

6. South River 168 points

7. Reservoir 175 points

8. Hereford 195 points

9. Park 271 points

10. St Paul's for Boys 279 points

11. DeMatha 282 points

...

20. South Carroll 578 points

Once again, I looked back at our 2018 results at this meet. There were 19 full frosh teams three years ago compared to 20 today, though there were a lot more entries in that race (317 compared with 188 today).

We finished dead last in that race, too, with 550 points. Our top finisher placed 54th, just ahead of where our third finisher was today, and our second finisher was all the way back in 156th place. Now, to be fair, with so many more athletes in that race, the results get a little more complicated than these straight-forward comparisons. That 156th place finisher for us was our captain, Tariq Lewis, whose time of 22:02.4 would have placed him 73rd this year. Still, Hayden and Jalen both finished ahead of Dawson Grogan's freshman time (his was that 54th place finish from 2018), so that was a terrific accomplishment for both of them.

Now, just for fun, let's think about if we placed Sayid in this race instead of varsity, we would subtract 103 points from our score (108 for our fifth finisher, then add one for Sayid and one for each of our other four runners who would have been pushed back a spot). That would put us at 179 points, bumping us up to 8th! In fact, because every single other runner for every team would have also been displaced (Sayid's time would have won the fresh/soph race), we can add five points to each other team's score, pushing Reservoir back to 180 points and giving us 7th place!

I'm more than happy with our 11th place finish today, but it's fun to consider just how strong our two youngest classes are as a whole, and they are very strong.

Open

Here are the results for our Junior/Senior athletes (80 total entries in the race). The number in front of each name signifies their overall place in the open race. In brackets are their first mile, second mile, and third mile splits:

50 Austin Boynes (Sr.) - 23:03.3 [(1) 7:15, (2) 7:53, (3) 7:55] CT-23:55 Virtual PR by 3 minutes 48 seconds

63 Jacob Robertson (Sr.) - 24:11.8 [(1) 7:36, (2) 8:37, (3) 7:59] PR & PCB by 2 min 46 sec CT-25:07 Virtual SB by 12 sec

67 Jackson McCormick (Sr.) - 24:46.7 [(1) 8:01, (2) 8:28, (3) 8:18] CT-25:43

77 Ian Brown (Sr.) - 27:53.3 [(1) 8:03, (2) 9:54, (3) 9:56] PR & PCB by 5 min 33 sec CT-28:56 Virtual SB by 2 min 28 sec

78 Maximo Legaspi (Jr.) - 28:15.8 [(1) 8:45, (2) 9:30, (3) 10:01] CT-29:20 Virtual SB by 1 minutes 56 seconds

79 Jaquada Moses (Jr.) - 33:47.7 [(1) 9:12, (2) 10:58, (3) 13:38] CT-35:04

All three of our athletes who had previously run on this course (Austin and Jackson did not run as freshmen) beat their 2018 times by a lot; not particularly surprising but still good to see. Austin in particular stood out in this race today. Entering this meet I expected him to be our third finisher in the open race and instead he finished more than a minute before our second finisher as he set a virtual PR by nearly four minutes!

Ian Brown has been getting back into shape nicely and I wouldn't be shocked if he takes another two and a half minutes off his time within the next month, which would incidentally set himself up to go after his career PR around the time reach WCACs or Private School States.

Jaquada was a bit late joining us this fall and, as I've told him, picked a doozy of a workout to start with. We did 1000m repeats at Greenbelt Lake on Wednesday, his first day of practice. His legs definitely had not recovered from that by today and between that and just not being in running form yet, the third mile was especially brutal for him today. Where most of our athletes thrived in the final mile in the absence of any steep hills, Jaquada was worn out after the first two. With time, he'll be back down well under the 30-minute mark.

Team Results

1. Centennial 24 points

2. River Hill 35 points

3. Atholton 104 points

4. South Carroll 117 points

5. Westminster 120 points

6. Clarksburg 130 points

7. DeMatha 175 points

We finished last as a team in the open race, but I saw what I wanted to see from our upperclassmen today. They had to do a fair amount of sitting around before their race, and quite frankly probably didn't do too much sitting as they were cheering on their varsity and underclass teammates through the day. They still came to compete and I'm very happy with each individual effort I saw from them today.

College Park parkrun (9/11/21)

We had one athlete run in the College Park parkrun on Saturday morning. Here is his result. The number in front of his name signifies his overall place in the parkrun (134 total entries in the race). In brackets is his average mile pace:

30 Andrew Righi (So.) - 25:31 [8:13] PR by 4 minutes 11 seconds

Final Thoughts

When I took over as the head coach in 2016, I attempted to gather as complete a record as I could of DeMatha's cross country history. Unfortunately, results are not easily found prior to 2000, so while I do have some records, they're very much incomplete. As such, when I discuss top times in a historical context, I'm talking about our history going back to 2000, the middle of a "

Prior to 2000, my research only turned up two instances of an athlete breaking 17 minutes in the 3-mile and just three instances of it in the 5k. Going back to 2000, Jayden's time today ranks #7 for DeMatha in this distance, Sayid's ranks #11, Christopher's ranks #18, Ian's ranks #20, and Michael's is #24 (one spot and 0.9 seconds ahead of his brother, Matthew Metz '18, who ran his time as a senior at the Seahawk Invitational in Edgewater.

We're all certainly on a high after today's third place finish. I'm absolutely ecstatic about it. Since I've been the head coach we've had just three Top 3 finishes in any meet (other than the two first place finishes at the Holy Cross scrimmage meets last year) - 2017 JV third place at the Georgetown Prep Classic, 2019 varsity runners-up at Landon, and now 2021 varsity third place at the Eagle Invite.

With that said, just as it's important to have a short term memory when it comes to failure, where we have to learn from those experiences and then put it behind us, we have to remember today isn't the end point. We can and should be excited about our performances at this meet, but the drive to improve should never end. We now have seven weeks to go until our conference championship. If we don't improve another step from today, we can say that nearly all of our athletes ran new PRs this year but we will not have come near reaching our potential.

We have to learn what we can from today. If you still are having difficulty maintaining your pace late in races, or you have too much energy at the finish, keep making adjustments to your racing strategy. If you're getting jostled around on the line, renew your focus during our general strength routines and take our upcoming weight room sessions seriously. And if the only thing you have to take away from today is the desire to feel the excitement of winning another individual or team prize, let that motivate you. I promise you'll never get tired of success, on the course or in life.

"People who succeed have momentum. The more they succeed, the more they want to succeed, and the more they find a way to succeed." - Tony Robbins

P.S. Thank you to Mrs. Bardonille for taking several photos at the meet today. Some of those will be on our team Instagram (@demathaxc) later today. Anybody who takes photos of our athletes at the meets is more than welcome to send those to me. I'll take the best of them and post them on our IG and if they're of a high enough quality pixel-wise, they may be useful for our Yearbook page, too!