2024 Mark Ferris Invitational

If you took photos during this week's meet, you can upload those photos to our Mark Ferris Invite folder in Google Drive using this link.

I know we didn't have a particularly celebratory atmosphere at the team tent after the race. It's a little hard to do so when we have to wait on the trophy at medals. When those arrive, we'll have a little celebration at practice.

As you know, this wasn't a big meet. Only six teams were there, but Georgetown Prep and Landon both have solid programs that have beaten us at invitationals during my time as the head coach. So while our win may not have been over any of our WCAC opponents or some of the strongest competition in the state, this is a win we can be proud of and hopefully it will serve as a great confidence boost for our guys as we enter a bye week and prepare for the stretch run of our season.

They had about four different iterations of the course in the weeks leading up to today (which is why there were several unused markings and the arrows pointed the wrong way for much of the course). Since they didn't have mile markers, I jogged the course to confirm the distance (it was almost exactly 3.10 miles) and to get the markers. Not to toot my own horn too loudly, but I'm pretty happy with my 23:05 considering I had my keys, and phone, was wearing cargo shorts, and haven't gone on a run in several weeks.

For our results below, I have marked in blue all athletes who set a new PR (personal record) in the cross country 5k at the meet. Additionally, in red, I have noted all athletes who set a new SB (season best), but not PR, in the cross country 5k. Since this is a very different course than the one some of our seniors ran on as freshmen, I won't be marking PCBs (personal course bests), but please feel free to look back at their results from this meet back in 2021.

Varsity

Here are the results for our varsity athletes (121 total finishers 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 last 1.1 mile splits:

1 Brandon Smoot (Sr.) - 18:06.6 [(1) 5:34, (2) 6:12, (3.1) 6:21]
2 Roman Zentek (Jr.) - 18:11.3 [(1) 5:36, (2) 6:15, (3.1) 6:20] PR by 7 seconds
4 Arvin Mirchandani (So.) - 18:25.1 [(1) 5:36, (2) 6:17, (3.1) 6:32] PR by 13 seconds
10 Maxwell Ellison (Sr.) - 19:37.8 [(1) 5:56, (2) 6:40, (3.1) 7:02]
11 Andrew Stinson (Fr.) - 19:40.3 [(1) 5:57, (2) 6:44, (3.1) 6:59] PR by 0.3 seconds
13 Jesse Holland III (Jr.) - 19:43.6 [(1) 5:57, (2) 6:48, (3.1) 6:58]
15 Malachi Wilson (Sr.) - 19:58.9 [(1) 5:58, (2) 6:56, (3.1) 7:05]
16 Jalen Neptune (Sr.) - 20:00.8 [(1) 6:09, (2) 6:36, (3.1) 7:16] SB by 13 seconds
21 William Jackson (Sr.) - 20:25.8 [(1) 5:58, (2) 7:06, (3.1) 7:21] SB by 1 minute 14 seconds
23 Lucas Moisiuk (Fr.) - 20:28.2 [(1) 6:22, (2) 6:59, (3.1) 7:07]
26 Jeremy Juste (Jr.) - 20:36.9 [(1) 6:02, (2) 7:09, (3.1) 7:26]*
31 Don DeRocha Jr (Jr.) - 20:58.0 [(1) 6:24, (2) 7:07, (3.1) 7:27]
32 Elijah Hawkins (So.) - 21:00.1 [(1) 6:33, (2) 7:02, (3.1) 7:25] PR by 1 minute 18 seconds
37 Nicholas Berry (Jr.) - 21:17.1 [(1) 6:27, (2) 7:11, (3.1) 7:39]
43 Cameron Lamb (Jr.) - 21:37.8 [(1) 6:30, (2) 7:17, (3.1) 7:51]
44 Tyler Ellis (Sr.) - 21:41.3 [(1) 6:34, (2) 7:18, (3.1) 7:49]
46 Alexander Soto (Fr.) - 21:57.5 [(1) 6:42, (2) 7:33, (3.1) 7:43]
53 Olutimilehin Adefiyiju (Fr.) - 22:34.7 [(1) 7:03, (2) 7:46, (3.1) 7:46] PR by 47 seconds
56 Brendan Dougherty (Sr.) - 22:39.1 [(1) 6:45, (2) 7:51, (3.1) 8:03] SB by 6 seconds
57 Renaud Williams (So.) - 22:40.8 [(1) 7:01, (2) 7:48, (3.1) 7:52]
58 Ryan Pickett (Jr.) - 22:44.4 [(1) 6:46, (2) 7:49, (3.1) 8:09] SB by 11 seconds
65 Tyson Woods (Jr.) - 23:35.9 [(1) 7:02, (2) 7:57, (3.1) 8:37]
78 Alexander Davis (Jr.) - 24:54.4 [(1) 7:09, (2) 8:41, (3.1) 9:04] SB by 7 seconds
80 Kazuki Reeves (So.) - 25:06.8 [(1) 7:48, (2) 8:37, (3.1) 8:42]
94 Xavier Raymond (Jr.) - 26:37.1 [(1) 6:58, (2) 9:19, (3.1) 10:20]
98 Julian Righi (So.) - 26:53.0 [(1) 7:39, (2) 9:14, (3.1) 10:00]
101 Tre Whitfield (Fr.) - 27:07.0 [(1) 7:49, (2) 9:24, (3.1) 9:54]
103 Aleko Rodousakis (Sr.) - 27:09.5 [(1) 7:48, (2) 9:25, (3.1) 9:57]
112 Jaidon Contreras (Fr.) - 29:54.7 [(1) 8:18, (2) 10:37, (3.1) 11:00]
113 Carter Leecost (Sr.) - 30:09.3 [(1) 8:46, (2) 9:56, (3.1) 11:27]
116 Stavros Rodousakis (Fr.) - 32:00.2 [(1) 8:39, (2) 11:37, (3.1) 11:44]
118 Emilio Chicas (Fr.) - 33:08.0 [(1) 8:41, (2) 11:38, (3.1) 12:49]
119 Devin Lewis (Sr.) - 33:45.0 [(1) 9:45, (2) 11:31, (3.1) 12:29]
120 Akintunde Shoetan (Sr.) - 34:10.7 [(1) 9:13, (2) 12:09, (3.1) 12:48]

Awards include individual medals for anybody who finished in the Top 30, which means we can expect to receive 11 medals in the coming weeks! Congrats to all of our guys who finished in that top quarter of the field, as well as to all our athletes who ran new PRs and season bests.

This is not what I would call a PR course. Certainly it is possible to run a PR at Landon, as we saw a handful of our athletes do, but this has always been a fairly challenging course and this year's edition may have been even moreso with the hill coming out of the woods included twice.

This is the second straight week Andrew PR'd by less than half a second. Joe LeGloahec has the record, at least during my tenure, for most consecutive meets in which he set a new PR, doing so in each of his first eleven 5k races for DeMatha. He had a few half-second PR's mixed in, so maybe Andrew will give that record a run.

It took Roman a little while last season to really get into form, but he's been very consistent through the first several weeks this season. As long as we can keep him healthy, I think he's got a good amount of time he can still knock off before the end of the season.

I've been really impressed with Elijah and Timi's improvement through the first few meets. It's common for inexperienced runners to have some inconsistency but take off large chunks of time from their PRs when they have good races. But both have consistently improved each weeks and it's especially impressive that they took off so much time on this course today.

While just six of our athletes set PRs today, we did have a handful of athletes within 10 seconds of their personal bests: they are Jesse Holland III, Renaud Williams, Malachi Wilson. Again, setting a PR or coming close to it on a course like this is definitely something worth feeling good about.

We have a few athletes who are dealing with various ailments, from hip and knee discomfort to shin splints and also a couple of hopefully minor ankle injuries. I did sit Terence out today because of some pain in his back in hopes that we could avoid aggravating it so he can get a couple good weeks of training in preparation for the PG Invite later this month and then MDXC, which is a very good PR course.

Team Results

1. DeMatha 26 points
2. Georgetown Prep 50 points
3. Landon 89 points
4. DC International 105 points
5. St. Mary's 128 points
6. Maret 139 points

We'll get a nice first place trophy in the mail, too, thanks to really strong performances from our Top 5 guys, in particular. The last time we won Landon's home invitational was in 2014 when my dad was the coach, two years before I took over the program.

Final Thoughts

I was already very happy to be back this week and excited to finally get to see our athletes race after missing the parkrun and our first two meets of the season. I'm even happier now that I was there to see some terrific PRs and celebrate a team win and a 1-2 finish from Brandon and Roman.

Next week we do not have a meet. I'm sure you will all enjoy the opportunity to sleep in on a Saturday morning and I hope you take full advantage of that. We will take advantage of the bye week, though, by building in an extra quality day this week. This means that Friday's practice will not end at 5pm as it usually does, but at 6:15 intead. Keep a look out for the updated practice schedule, which I will send out on Remind in the morning.

With all the aches and pains many of our athletes are feeling, I to encourse those athletes to make time to see our athletic trainers this week; the sooner, the better. If you're an upperclassman, make use of you free period. Underclassmen may need to reach out to the trainers to request a note if you'd like to utilize your study hall period, otherwise you'll need to make time during lunch or go right after school before we leave campus for practice.

I also want to emphasize the importance of warming up and cooling down properly. Make sure you are taking stretches and drills seriously. The reason we spend almost a third of every practice on them is because they make a difference in preventing injury, but only if you make the most of that time.