2022 College Park parkrun

First things first, thank you to all of the amazing volunteers who make the College Park parkrun possible every week. They do an amazing job and it's an incredible program that parkrun offers to make these events free to the community year-round. It's become a great tradition for us to run our first 5k of the season with them as a tune-up for our race schedule and they were very gracious hosts today.

I'm so happy with the performances our athletes had today. They did a great job all around.

Let's jump right into results. I'll share some takeaways at the end. For our returning athletes, in blue, I have noted all athletes who set a new PR (personal record) in the cross country 5k (3.1 mile). I know some of our new athletes have run the distance before and may have set new PRs, but I only track your DeMatha times because I hope you'll run your best times (so far) as DeMatha students. And in silver, I have noted all athletes who set a new PCB (personal course best) for the Paint Branch Trail out-and-back 5k course (if you've never run this course before, today's run is your current PCB).

Open Race

Here are the results for all of our athletes (167 total entries in the race). The number in front of each name signifies their overall place in the race. In brackets are their first mile split, their mile pace for the middle 1.1 miles, and their last mile split [this is a little different than the usual format]:

1 Jayden Keels (Sr.) - 16:51 [(1) 5:09, (2.1) 5:48 pace, (3.1) 5:19] PR by 20 seconds PCB by 28 seconds

2 Sayid Shakur (Jr.) - 17:43 [(1) 5:34, (2.1) 6:03 pace, (3.1) 5:30]

3 James Westbrooks III (Jr.) - 17:46 [(1) 5:35, (2.1) 6:03 pace, (3.1) 5:32]

4 Graham Fenn (Jr.) - 17:54 [(1) 5:35, (2.1) 6:02 pace, (3.1) 5:40] PR by 11 seconds PCB by 47 seconds

5 Ian Parsons (Sr.) - 17:57 [(1) 5:34, (2.1) 6:04 pace, (3.1) 5:42] PCB by 32 seconds

6 Tarik Harris Jr. (Jr.) - 18:27 [(1) 5:35, (2.1) 6:03 pace, (3.1) 6:13]

7 Christopher Toomer (Sr.) - 18:37 [(1) 5:44, (2.1) 6:17 pace, (3.1) 5:59] PCB by 2 seconds

8 Jalen Neptune (So.) - 18:38 [(1) 5:44, (2.1) 6:17 pace, (3.1) 6:00] PR & PCB by 1 minute 14 seconds

9 Daden Grogan (So.) - 19:07 [(1) 5:36, (2.1) 6:30 pace, (3.1) 6:22]

11 Hayden Walsh (So.) - 20:29 [(1) 5:57, (2.1) 7:06 pace, (3.1) 6:44]

20 Roman Zentek (Fr.) - 21:54 [(1) 6:58, (2.1) 7:37 pace, (3.1) 6:34]

21 William Jackson (So.) - 22:23 [(1) 6:22, (2.1) 7:40 pace, (3.1) 7:35]

26 Xavier Raymond (Fr.) - 23:05 [(1) 6:30, (2.1) 8:01 pace, (3.1) 7:46]

30 Nicholas Berry (Fr.) - 23:29 [(1) 6:57, (2.1) 7:55 pace, (3.1) 7:52]

32 Jesse Holland III (Fr.) - 23:51 [(1) 7:21, (2.1) 8:07 pace, (3.1) 7:35]

33 Cameron Lamb (Fr.) - 23:54 [(1) 7:14, (2.1) 8:07 pace, (3.1) 7:45]

37 William Herman (Fr.) - 24:17 [(1) 7:26, (2.1) 8:22 pace, (3.1) 7:39]

42 Daniel Traves (Fr.) - 25:03 [(1) 6:55, (2.1) 8:52 pace, (3.1) 8:23]

49 Yaphet Negussie (Sr.) - 25:23 [(1) 7:43, (2.1) 8:34 pace, (3.1) 8:15] PCB by 3 minutes 49 seconds

51 Peter Brown (Jr.) - 25:46 [(1) 7:43, (2.1) 8:49 pace, (3.1) 8:21] PCB by 15 seconds

61 Brendan Dougherty (So.) - 27:35 [(1) 8:01, (2.1) 9:27 pace, (3.1) 9:11]

Before we move on from results, we also had a couple of additional individuals I'd like to point out who ran today:

38 Coach David Hoke '13 - 24:20 [(1) 7:24, (2.1) 8:22 pace, (3.1) 7:43]

59 Corlie McCormick '22 - 27:09 [(1) 7:31, (2.1) 10:03 pace, (3.1) 8:35]

Michael Metz (Sr.) reported an 18:36 solo 5k today; pain in his upper back locked him up a bit so we'll get that looked at this week.

I always like to shout out coaches and alums who I coached when they come out and join us for parkruns or compete in open races at our meets that offer them. If any of our cross country alums are reading this, I hope you know that we're always happy to have you visit us for practices and meets, and if there's an open race at our meets we'd love to be able to watch you race again.

The first thing I'd like to point out today is that we had seven freshmen running today! We may have one or two more join us before our September 1 deadline to join the roster, but seven is a fantastic number! Every one of them met our 30-minute performance standard and none of them cut it close. In fact, our top five freshmen finishers reached the finish line within exactly 2 minutes of each other. This wasn't particularly surprising since they've done a good job running as a group in practice this week, but it's a great indication that they'll be able to continue to train together and push each other through the season. Congrats, also, to Roman who told me that his time today was a PR by more than a minute. He's a parkrun veteran who knows this course very well and did a great job using that experience today.

I'm going to come back to Jayden a bit later in the write up because, as some of you may have guessed, today's performance was historically relevant in DeMatha cross country history. Before I talk about his performance, though, it's worth pointing out what a great job of pack running our next four finishers behind him did. In fact, we may as well call it the next five finishers. Tarik was right with that group of Sayid, James, Graham, and Ian, but he overran the finish area by what Coach Anthony estimated to be somewhere around 10 seconds and had to turn back and enter the finishing chute. He likely would have been in the low 18s today.

I want to welcome back Jalen, who missed the second half of last season, spent the summer playing basketball, and made a huge splash today by setting a new PR by more than a minute. Yaphet returns to the team for the first time since his freshman year after Covid got in the way of his participation the last two years. He didn't quite reach his freshman season best time, but he blew his freshman parkrun time out of the water today.

Historical Perspective

The last time a DeMatha student broke 17 minutes in a 5k was 2014 when Joe Graham '15 ran 16:55 at the Adidas XC Challenge on an extremely fast course in Cary, NC. (Note: Joe also ran 16:55 as a junior on that same Adidas course.)

Prior to Joe, I only have records of four other individuals in our history who have broken 17 minutes in a 5k.

• John Brewer '12 did it twice as a senior, with his fastest mark a 16:43 on a relatively difficult Paul Short Invitational course at Lehigh.

• Rudy Kriester, an exchange student from Germany who I do not believe ultimately graduated from DeMatha, ran a 16:08 at the Metro Catholic Championships in his junior season in the fall of 1991.

• Robert Patterson '09 broke the threshold nine times across his junior and senior seasons with his best time a 15:48 at the Georgetown Prep Classic in the fall of 2008.

• And I broke the 17-minute mark 19 times between my sophomore, junior, and season seasons, with my best time a 15:27 as a junior in the same Prep Classic where Rob set his high school PR. (For the record: Rob beat me every time we raced head-to-head in college. He was the type of runner who got better as distances got longer than the 5k, which seemed to be my best distance.)

This makes Jayden just the fifth athlete in DeMatha's history, at least according to the records I've collected over the years, to break 17 minutes. And I'd like to point out that we have three athletes within a minute of that mark with two full seasons of high school cross country in front of them, not to mention a few seniors who are within a minute or so of that mark. There is no doubt in my mind that this is one of the most talented teams, if not THE most talented team, in DeMatha's history.

I'm going to list a few rankings from today's performances. I'd like to point out that cross country record-keeping from prior to 2000 is a bit shoddy, so while our History page recognizes some of the most important athletes in our program's entire history, when I talk about rankings I am almost always going to be talking about 2000-present because all results I have from prior to that are partial results with many meets completely missing from our records.

So, today's performances that enter our Top 100 (since 2000) are:

• Jayden Keels - #26 overall, #14 among seniors

• Sayid Shakur - #77 overall

• James Westbrooks III - #81 overall (ties Jayden's time at the season-opening parkrun from last year)

• Graham Fenn - #98 overall

Now that list includes many athletes more than once. I currently own 25 of DeMatha's 100 fastest times since 2000 (I had more before Jayden and then Sayid began knocking some of mine off in the past couple of years). Jayden currently is up to eight of those 100 entries, and while his Private School Championship time from 2021 may get knocked out of the Top 100 soon he'll be adding plenty more than that one he'll lose over the course of this season.

Say we take away all but the fastest time each person has run in DeMatha's history. Since 2000, there are now 27 current and former students who have broken 18 minutes in a 5k. The current athletes on that list and their rankings are:

• #4 Jayden Keels

• #12 Sayid Shakur

• #14 Christopher Toomer

• #18 James Westbrooks III

• #22 Ian Parsons

• #25 Graham Fenn

That's rather remarkable to have six of the 27 best runners since 2000 here at the same time, and we have even more who will join that list over the course of this season.

Final Thoughts

Again, I'd like to congratulate everyone on their performances today. We had a great turnout with more than 20 athletes showing up for the parkrun this morning.

We had a number of PRs, course bests, and for those who didn't set new personal bests, remember that this is just the beginning of the season. We have nine weeks until WCAC Championships. It's a short season, but it's still plenty of time to get better. Today was all about learning the distance, or re-familiarizing yourself with it for our returners.

Information for the upcoming week and next Saturday's meet will be available shortly and I'll send all of that out via Remind. Athletes, remember to check your emails on Monday morning; by then, I will have sent you your recommended training paces for this week's workouts. Parents, you'll receive an email from SignUpGenius soon that you can use to volunteer to bring water, gatorade, and various snacks for the athletes to have at next Saturday's meet.

Thanks everyone! Way to kick off this 2022 season!

"The only one who can tell you 'you can't win' is you and you don't have to listen." - Jessica Ennis-Hill