2024 College Park parkrun #2 & VA XC Showcase

It was quite a chilly morning for us, but a dry running surface and a bit of sunshine had our guys ready to go. Of 32 athletes who ran today, 19 set new personal bests and five others set new season bests. A total of 22 athletes set new course bests (not including the three who ran the parkrun for the first time today).

Then, this afternoon in Mechanicsville, Virginia, two of our athletes competed in the small schools division of the VA XC Showcase. Conditions looked great and while the winning time for the signature race was 26 seconds slower than last year's, we still saw six athletes break 16 minutes in that boys showcase race during the morning session, compared to just two in 2023.

As always, in blue, I have noted all athletes who set a new PR (personal record) in the cross country 5k (3.1 mile) at the parkrun. While results from this race won't show up on an athlete's MileSplit or Athletic.net profile, I include these results in my own team records. Additionally, in red, I have noted all athletes who set a new SB (season best), but not PR, in the cross country 5k. And for those who have participated in previous College Park parkruns with us, 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.

Open Race - College Park parkrun

Here are the results for all of our athletes (219 total finishers in the run - I saw a lot of parents in the results; Well done!). The number in front of each name signifies their overall place in the race. In brackets are their first mile, middle 1.1 mile, and last mile splits:

1 Arvin Mirchandani (So.) - 18:13 [(1) 5:49, (2.1) 6:47, (3.1) 5:37] PCB by 31 seconds
3 Phillip Marshall II (So.) - 18:18 [(1) 5:56, (2.1) 6:41, (3.1) 5:41] PCB by 22 seconds
4 Jesse Holland III (Jr.) - 18:19 [(1) 5:50, (2.1) 6:47, (3.1) 5:42] PR by 1 minute 6 seconds PCB by 1 minute 59 seconds
5 Jalen Neptune (Sr.) - 18:24 [(1) 5:55, (2.1) 6:42, (3.1) 5:47] SB by 48 seconds PCB by 14 seconds
6 Malachi Wilson (Sr.) - 18:46 [(1) 5:50, (2.1) 6:49, (3.1) 6:07]* PR by 46 seconds
7 Andrew Stinson (Fr.) - 18:55 [(1) 5:51, (2.1) 6:53, (3.1) 6:11] PR by 45 seconds PCB by 46 seconds
8 Don DeRocha Jr (Jr.) - 19:01 [(1) 6:00, (2.1) 6:59, (3.1) 6:02] PR by 1 minute 40 seconds PCB by 1 minute 55 seconds
11 Maxwell Ellison (Sr.) - 19:19 [(1) 6:01, (2.1) 7:08, (3.1) 6:10] PCB by 3 seconds
12 Lucas Moisiuk (Fr.) - 19:58 [(1) 6:25, (2.1) 7:24, (3.1) 6:09]
13 Alexander Soto (Fr.) - 20:03 [(1) 6:25, (2.1) 7:24, (3.1) 6:14] PR & PCB by 50 seconds
14 Cameron Lamb (Jr.) - 20:43 [(1) 6:26, (2.1) 7:40, (3.1) 6:37] PR & PCB by 23 seconds
15 Jeremy Juste (Jr.) - 20:48 [(1) 6:14, (2.1) 7:53, (3.1) 6:41]*
16 Renaud Williams (So.) - 20:58 [(1) 6:15, (2.1) 7:53, (3.1) 6:50] PR by 20 seconds PCB by 3 minutes 14 seconds
17 Brendan Dougherty (Sr.) - 21:02 [(1) 6:22, (2.1) 7:49, (3.1) 6:51] PR & PCB by 3 seconds
18 Olutimilehin Adefiyiju (Fr.) - 21:13 [(1) 6:32, (2.1) 7:57, (3.1) 6:44] PR by 6 seconds PCB by 5 minutes 15 seconds
19 Tyler Ellis (Sr.) - 21:31 [(1) 6:42, (2.1) 7:58, (3.1) 6:51] PCB by 2 seconds
20 Ryan Pickett (Jr.) - 21:34 [(1) 6:32, (2.1) 8:01, (3.1) 7:01] SB by 11 seconds
27 Tyson Woods (Jr.) - 22:23 [(1) 7:22, (2.1) 8:13, (3.1) 6:48] PR by 15 seconds PCB by 1 minute 49 seconds
29 Julian Maring (So.) - 22:27 [(1) 7:00, (2.1) 8:25, (3.1) 7:02] PR by 1 second PCB by 7 seconds
31 Kazuki Reeves (So.) - 22:32 [(1) 7:23, (2.1) 8:14, (3.1) 6:55] PR by 15 seconds PCB by 3 minutes 19 seconds
35 Alexander Davis (Jr.) - 22:50 [(1) 6:39, (2.1) 8:38, (3.1) 7:33] PR by 17 seconds PCB by 1 minute 1 seconds
39 Joseph LeGloahec (Jr.) - 23:32 [(1) 7:14, (2.1) 8:45, (3.1) 7:33]
43 Aleko Rodousakis (Sr.) - 24:18 [(1) 7:29, (2.1) 9:26, (3.1) 7:23] SB by 1 minute 59 seconds
49 Julian Righi (So.) - 24:30 [(1) 7:29, (2.1) 9:27, (3.1) 7:34] PR & PCB by 12 seconds
59 Carter Leecost (Sr.) - 25:54 [(1) 7:56, (2.1) 9:30, (3.1) 8:28] PR & PCB by 32 seconds
68 Jaidon Contreras (Fr.) - 26:18 [(1) 7:22, (2.1) 9:59, (3.1) 8:57] PR by 26 seconds PCB by 6 minutes 55 seconds
82 Emilio Chicas (Fr.) - 27:14 [(1) 8:32, (2.1) 9:52, (3.1) 8:50] PR by 1 minute 8 seconds PCB by 8 minutes 22 seconds
-- Terence Rascher (Fr.) - 27:24 [(1) 8:17, (2.1) 10:09, (3.1) 8:58]* PR by 44 seconds
88 Akintunde Shoetan (Sr.) - 27:47 [(1) 8:33, (2.1) 10:25, (3.1) 8:49] SB by 2 minutes 5 seconds PCB by 4 minutes 37 seconds
98 Stavros Rodousakis (Fr.) - 28:44 [(1) 8:31, (2.1) 9:52, (3.1) 10:21] PR by 56 seconds PCB by 3 minutes 20 seconds
127 Kasapo Mwanza (Jr.) - 31:15 [(1) 9:10, (2.1) 11:17, (3.1) 10:48] SB by 1 minutes 21 seconds PCB by 4 minutes 37 seconds
162 Devin Lewis (Sr.) - 35:47 [(1) 11:25, (2.1) 13:25, (3.1) 10:57]

We also had a team alum in the results from today's parkrun. Congrats on a very impressive run!

2 Corlie Jackson McCormick '22 - 18:16 [(1) 5:55, (2.1) 6:45, (3.1) 5:36] Beats HS PR by 4 minutes 46 seconds 

And finally we had one honorary team alum today. Nicely done!

36 Nolan Rascher '24 - 23:19 [(1) 6:52, (2.1) 8:26, (3.1) 8:01]

Small School - VA XC Showcase

Here are the results for our athletes registered in the Boys Small School Race. The number in front of each name signifies their overall place in the small school race (324 total finishers). In brackets are their first mile, second mile, and last 1.1 mile splits:

18 Roman Zentek (Jr.) - 17:08.0 [(1) 5:13, (2) 5:47, (3.1) 6:08] PR by 33 seconds
32 Brandon Smoot (Sr.) - 17:41.2 [(1) 5:18, (2) 6:00, (3.1) 6:23]

Roman's time ranks 57th among all finishing times by DeMatha cross country athletes dating back to 2000. It also ranks him 11th among all athletes who have run cross country at DeMatha during that time frame. He is now within reach of being the 10th DeMatha runner since 2000 to break 17 minutes in the 5k.

Brandon didn't set a new PR, but he's been remarkably consistent over the course of this season. He's had only one result all season that wasn't between 17:39 and 17:47. I know that can feel frustrating in its own way, but my hope is that he's still due for a solid PR and that it will come next week in the most important race of the year.

Congrats to all of our athletes, particularly those who ran new PRs today. Several of them hit new milestones with their PRs.

Jesse, Malachi, and Andrew each broke 19 minutes for the first time!

Don broke 20 minutes for the first time, and he didn't even flirt with that line. He blew it out of the water, nearly breaking 19 minutes along with it!

Cam and Renaud broke 21 minutes for the first time, and Alex Davis broke 23 minutes for the first time. That last benchmark is noteworthy in part because 23:00 is the cutoff to follow our Tier 3 traning plan.

I also want to give a quick shoutout to Joe. It's been pretty uncommon during his high school career to not see blue text accompanying his results. He set a new PR every meet of his freshman and sophomore year until WCAC Championships last year. He's been dealing with a pretty significant leg injury since the second week of training. Today was his first race of the year, and I told him before the race that 25 minute was a good goal and that 24 minutes might be in the cards. He wound up finishing in the mid-23s, which is pretty darn good off of about four days of training and a few bike workouts over the previous two weeks.

Carter broke 26 minutes for the first time, Emilio and Terence broke 28 minutes, and Stav had his first sub-29 finish! Way to work, guys!

Note: We don't have an official finishing place for Terence. There must have been some confusion at the finish line and he was not given a chip to match with his barcode. This is why we always try to have a coach at the finish for redundancy, just in case we don't get an official time for an athlete, we can still report their performance in the recap.

Final Thoughts

My hope is that coming out of today all our athletes are feeling confident heading into WCACs. Between the many PRs and SBs, along with several performances that were within seconds of setting new PRs or SBs, we'll have a great deal of confidence entering this final race of the season.

With no private school championship on our schedule, next week is the time to leave everything out there on the course. I'm very excited to see what our team can accomplish.

I'll be honest, we've got a challenge on our hands to stay in the Top 5 of the conference this year, but I feel more confident today than I did even two weeks ago that we are in a position to do so.

One of the things that stood out to me the most today at the parkrun was the fantastic pack running I saw at the front of the race. Arvin, Phillip, Jesse, Jalen, Malachi and Andrew were all within six seconds of each other at the mile mark and were all still within about seven seconds of each other at the 2.1-mile mark.

If we are going to finish in the Top 5 next week, we're going to need a similar approach. The hope is that Roman and Brandon can set the tone out front with Arvin continuing to move closer to their positioning, but if our 4 through 7 finishers can pack run in the low 18s, not only minimizing our point haul but also displacing some athletes from other teams, we may have a chance to compete for 4th or even 3rd.

Let's have one last great week of practice and set ourselves up to put forth our best performances of the year next week!