2021 Maryland Private School Championship

Congratulations to everyone on a fantastic season and a strong finish to the year. We haven't run at this meet since my second year coaching at DeMatha for a few reasons. The biggest reason is that in the past we've usually had several key varsity members playing a winter sport, whether it was basketball, hockey, or wrestling, who could not continue through to the private schools championship. Between that and the fact that we often lack depth behind those top 7, it hasn't made much sense in a while to continue on to this meet after finishing last place in 2016 and second to last in 2017.

This year, our entire varsity was able to continue on to this meet, and even if we had lost one or two we could have bumped Hayden and/or William up and, while it would have been a little bit of a hit to our team results, we still would have been very competitive.

Let's jump right into our results from the day. As always, in blue, I have noted all athletes who set a new PR (personal record) in the cross country 5k (3.1 mile). In red, I have noted all athletes who set a new SB (season best), but not PR, in the cross country 5k. Also, any athletes who ran at the Georgetown Prep Classic had an opportunity to set a new PCB (personal course best) for this particular version of the Georgetown Prep course, and those will be marked in silver.

Varsity

Here are the results for our varsity athletes (115 total entries in the race). The number in front of each name signifies their overall place in the varsity race, including athletes from both large and small schools. In brackets are their first mile, second mile, and last 1.1 mile splits:

12 Jayden Keels (Jr.) - 17:54.0 [(1) 5:25, (2) 5:35, (3.1) 6:54] PCB by 28 seconds

14 Christopher Toomer (Jr.) - 17:54.9 [(1) 5:34, (2) 5:42, (3.1) 6:39] PCB by 59 seconds

18 Sayid Shakur (So.) - 18:07.3 [(1) 5:32, (2) 5:35, (3.1) 7:00]

27 Graham Fenn (So.) - 18:28.5 [(1) 5:34, (2) 5:43, (3.1) 7:12] PCB by 33 seconds

33 Ian Parsons (Jr.) - 18:40.3 [(1) 5:33, (2) 5:49, (3.1) 7:18] PCB by 36 seconds

46 Michael Metz (Jr.) - 19:15.0 [(1) 5:49, (2) 5:57, (3.1) 7:29] PCB by 6 seconds

68 Tariq Lewis (Sr.) - 20:09.7 [(1) 5:53, (2) 6:20, (3.1) 7:57] PCB by 40 seconds

Sayid missed the Georgetown Prep Classic back in late September; I'm sure he would have run a pretty nice PCB of his own considering his time today was only 10 seconds slower than he ran the following week on a much faster (and possibly shorter, the jury's still out on that) Arundel course.

Great job to all of our guys. Christopher ran a fantastic last mile, as he usually does, and nearly caught Jayden by the finish. His pace for the last 1.1-mile split was 6:03, so he very nearly ran his entire race at under 6-minute pace. That's really impressive on this course.

Despite the very difficult course, Jayden and Christopher both ran Top 100 5k times for DeMatha since 2000. Jayden's time ranks 94th on that list and Christopher's ranks 96th.

I know Michael was disappointed about his race and would have liked to run a bigger course best. He ran so well two weeks ago at WCACs. Graham, meanwhile, was a little off his game at WCACs but came back very strong today. These races happen. The biggest disappointment is probably not having a race next week to bounce back in, but Michael should be extremely proud of his season, as should all seven of our varsity athletes.

Team Results

Here are the varsity team results for the Large School Division:

1. Calvert Hall 35 points

2. Gilman 76 points

3. DeMatha 79 points (6th place: 36th in large school division)

4. Mt. St. Joseph 79 points (6th place: 42nd in large school division)

5. The Heights 143 points

6. Landon 185 points

7. Archbishop Spalding 195 points

8. Good Counsel 200 points

9. St. Mary's Ryken 231 points

10. Georgetown Prep 236 points

11. Bullis 326 points

One more reason for Michael not to be too disappointed is that he won the tiebreaker that gave us third instead of fourth place.

When they announced the team scores during the awards ceremony, some of us were a little bit surprised because we thought we should have finished second based on a cursory look through the team results. Granted, we were looking mostly at Calvert Hall and Mt. St. Joseph and not so much at Gilman.

My initial thought was that we might have finished second if all athletes in both large and small schools were included, but I ran the numbers to see how things would have shaken out if there weren't two divisions. In that case, the results would have looked this way:

1. Calvert Hall 40 points

2. Gilman 91 points

3. DeMatha 93 points

4. Mt. St. Joseph 95 points

5. Charles E Smith 166 points

6. The Heights 178 points

I won't include the rest of the scores, but you can see that we actually would not have finished second, though we would have been one point closer to Gilman and would not have needed a tiebreaker to beat Mt. St. Joseph. One of the small schools also would have finished Top 5 overall, an impressive feat when you consider the cutoff for a small school is, I believe, 400 students.

Junior Varsity

Here are the results for our junior varsity athletes (90 total large school entries in the race). The number in front of each name signifies their overall place in the JV race, including athletes from both large and small schools. In brackets are their first mile, second mile, and last 1.1 mile splits:

10 Hayden Walsh (Fr.) - 19:43.5 [(1) 5:47, (2) 6:14, (3.1) 7:43] PCB by 1 minute 2 seconds

23 William Jackson (Fr.) - 20:50.5 [(1) 6:00, (2) 6:32, (3.1) 8:19] PCB by 58 seconds

48 Desmond Holt (Sr.) - 22:26.4 [(1) 6:26, (2) 7:10, (3.1) 8:50] PCB by 1 minute 16 seconds

62 Jacob Robertson (Sr.) - 23:31.2 [(1) 6:48, (2) 7:26, (3.1) 9:17]

72 Austin Boynes (Sr.) - 24:32.3 [(1) 7:13, (2) 7:52, (3.1) 9:27] PCB by 10 seconds

75 Brendan Dougherty (Fr.) - 24:43.2 [(1) 7:20, (2) 7:56, (3.1) 9:27] PCB by 2 minutes 16 seconds

77 Andrew Righi (So.) - 24:56.7 [(1) 7:27, (2) 8:00, (3.1) 9:30] PCB by 2 minutes 17 seconds

80 Maximo Legaspi (Jr.) - 25:05.2 [(1) 7:32, (2) 8:18, (3.1) 9:15] SB by 14 seconds PCB by 2 minutes 11 seconds

81 Ian Brown (Sr.) - 25:53.6 [(1) 7:28, (2) 8:00, (3.1) 10:26] PCB by 2 minutes 26 seconds

85 Jackson McCormick (Sr.) - 27:12.2 [(1) 7:38, (2) 8:53, (3.1) 10:41]

Hayden and William closed out their season very nicely today. Hayden earned a medal as a Top 15 finisher in the JV race and I know both of them will be working hard over next summer to try and earn that varsity spot Tariq will leave behind when he graduates this spring.

Brendan has been an absolute metronome recently. His last three 5k races at Gunpowder Falls, the Agricultural Farm Park, and today at Georgetown Prep, have all been within three seconds of each other (24:41, 24:40, and 24:43, respectively).

I don't know if there's actually a direct link between the very similar PCBs run by Brendan, Andrew, Maximo, and Ian. I don't know if they pulled each other along to faster times or if by training together they all found themselves running similar course bests. Regardless, great job to all four of them, particularly to Maximo who was our only athlete today to run his fastest race of the season.

Jacob didn't run the Prep Classic but just like Sayid he was within 10 seconds of his time at Arundel from the following week, so there's no doubt he would have run a really nice course best.

Jackson has been dealing with an injury over the past three weeks or so that has forced him to miss some practices. He said it didn't bother him much at all today, though it looked like he was in a bit of pain when he passed me coming toward the mile and again at the two mile. Even so, he pushed through that pain, finished the race with a strong sprint, and wound up less than two seconds off his time from the Prep Classic; an exceptional effort.

Team Results

Here are the JV team results, which were not broken up by divisions:

1. The Heights 31 points

2. Gilman 40 points

3. Mt. St. Joseph 73 points

4. Good Counsel 124 points

5. DeMatha 157 points

6. St. Andrew's Episcopal 158 points

7. Georgetown Prep 176 points

8. St. Mary's Ryken 203 points

My first year coaching DeMatha's cross country team, we didn't even have enough runners to field a JV team and so I just threw all of our runners into varsity, a literal rookie mistake on my part because my last two runners for that day wound up with nobody to run with and their performances suffered.

My second year coaching, we finished last in the JV race. We generally don't have a ton of depth, as I've mentioned before, so for us to have enough depth, with enough of that depth coming from guys who are not doing winter sports, made a huge difference for us today. I'm every bit as excited about this result as I am the varsity result or our WCAC finish. Our junior varsity athletes have worked so hard this season and they should celebrate this as a huge accomplishment!

Final Thoughts

As it is every year, it is bittersweet to see the season come to a close. But it's much more bitter than sweet for me than in past years.

Last year, I was disappointed that we couldn't have a more climactic finish to the season with a championship meet. And in the two years prior to that I was coaching with very little help through the season and so while I was disappointed to say goodbye to my athletes I was also very relieved to be able to rest from coaching for a bit.

This year, I've had great support from Coach Anthony and Coach Hoke, Tariq and the rest of our seniors followed the example of previous senior classes and were great leaders and, I think, embraced the moments when I allowed them to take the lead on stretches, general strength routines, and more. I am certainly grateful to get a short break and to sleep in for the next several Saturdays. But I am also far less run down than I am used to being at this point in the season and I will truly miss this group.

Those of you continuing on to indoor track need to take some time off to allow your bodies and minds rest and to allow your training clock to "reset." If you don't allow your body to come down off a peak, your next peak will be substantially lower than if you allow a full reset, which takes at minimum seven days. I strongly advice, considering we're coming off a 23 week training plan, that you take 10 to 14 days off running. At the very most, you can do a couple of easy 30-minute runs in the second week of your recovery, but I strongly advise against anything more than that. If you don't give your body the time to recover, I promise your body will be crying out for a reprieve long before we reach the outdoor track championships in mid-May.

There will be some end-of-season loose ends to tie up in the coming week. I will reach out to everyone regarding those items, including uniform return (seniors also have the option to purchase their uniform to keep), the team banquet (which we usually hold sometime in December), and a couple other odd and ends. Additionally, I will remind juniors to reach out to me in the coming week or so if they are interested in being a captain next season. I like to announce captains at the banquet but have been unable to for the past two years, so I'll want to meet with any interested juniors before then to discuss so that I can make that decision.

Once again, congratulations everyone! Thank you to Coach Anthony and Coach Hoke for all your help this season. Thank you to the parents for all of your support of both myself, my coaches, and your sons. And thank you to the athletes for buying in to our training plan, giving your all every day, and for making this one of the most memorable seasons in DeMatha cross country history!

I can't wait to do it again next year! See you in Summer 2022!