2024 Prince George's Invitational

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

Once again, team trophies were not on site for the meet, and I'm not sure if they were planning a team award for second place, but at least this time we had an awards ceremony where we were able to celebrate our medalists in the varsity race and hear our team announces as the runners-up for the meet!

The meet wasn't particularly well organized, as we all saw. I'm assuming they weren't allowed to use paint to mark the course or numbers for the starting boxes, but it would have been nice to have numbered cones or flags so they could let schools know up front where they'd be located instead of spending 20 minutes organizing athletes on the line when the top finishers should have already been done running.

Then they gave no warning that they might combine the girls and boys JV races, so our team was caught off guard. With the meet running so far behind, I advised our JV runners to wait for the girls race to start to complete their 10-minute warmup jog. Fortunately it was warm enough that I don't think they really needed it as much as they normally would have. No doubt it still affected a few athletes with their routines being messed with.

Despite all this, we had a lot of performances to feel really good about today. So let's get to them.

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 the first time DeMatha has attended this meet, at least in the past 20 years and possibly ever, there are no new PCBs (personal course bests) to note.

Varsity

Here are the results for our varsity athletes (145 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:

8 Roman Zentek (Jr.) - 17:40.63 [(1) 5:38, (2) 5:54, (3.1) 6:09] PR by 31 seconds
10 Brandon Smoot (Sr.) - 17:47.61 [(1) 5:38, (2) 6:03, (3.1) 6:07]
13 Arvin Mirchandani (So.) - 18:01.54 [(1) 5:42, (2) 6:07, (3.1) 6:13] PR by 24 seconds
15 Phillip Marshall II (So.) - 18:07.40 [(1) 5:45, (2) 6:12, (3.1) 6:10] PR by 31 seconds
26 Maxwell Ellison (Sr.) - 18:43.84 [(1) 5:57, (2) 6:03, (3.1) 6:44] PR by 38 seconds
48 Jesse Holland III (Jr.) - 19:25.40 [(1) 6:05, (2) 6:30, (3.1) 6:50] PR by 13 seconds
76 Andrew Stinson (Fr.) - 22:13.87 [(1) 6:30, (2) 7:28, (3.1) 8:16]

Our first four finishers all medaled by finishing the in Top 15 of the varsity race. Roman was our first finisher for the first time in his high school career, broke 18 minutes for the first time in his career, and set a massive PR despite having to sit out a handful of workouts these past two weeks as he's dealt with some pain in one of his toes.

Roman's time makes him the 23rd fastest DeMatha cross country runner since 2000. Another 10-second PR will push him into the Top 20.

Brandon was within half a second of his time at the Top of the Hill Invitational and took 19 seconds off his time from Landon.

Arvin and Phillip continue to impress. I know Arvin wanted that sub-18 today but he's going to get it next week on a much faster MDXC course. And Phillip bounced back nicely after a substantial drop-off between Trials of Miles and Top of the Hill.

Maxwell had seemed to be stuck in the mid-19s but ran his fastest time of the season by 43 seconds and finally broke through that 19-minute barrier. Jesse dipped under 19:30 for the first time.

Andrew has been dealing with shin splints for some time now and has missed a pretty significant amount of training in recent weeks. I think that's primarily what showed up in the second mile as his cardio isn't quite in a place to support the very strong first mile he ran today. Impressively, he ran faster for the last 1.1 miles, which included the hill which causes his legs to start hurting quite a bit. Hopefully with the rest of our courses this season being flat, he'll be able to continue training and racing but we'll keep monitoring his shins. For today, I was just impressed with the grit he showed to finish the race.

Team Results

1. Poolesville 51 points
2. DeMatha 63 points
3. Chesapeake 64 points
4. Eleanor Roosevelt 120 points
5. Frederick 153 points
6. McKinley Tech 190 points
7. Dunbar (MD) 215 points
8. Bowie 259 points
9. St. Mary's Ryken 271 points (6th finisher: 81st)
10. Frederick Douglass 271 points (6th finisher: 87th)
...
18. Northwestern 481 points

With Poolesville in deep Montgomery County and Chesapeake in Anne Arundel, we were easily the strongest PG team today. We came away with a slim margin over Chesapeake for second place thanks to Arvin and Max, who each beat a Chesapeake runner by one place.

In fact, Brandon beat a Frederick runner by about half a second. If that result had flipped, we would have fallen into a tie with Chesapeake and they would have won that tie since their 6th man finished 24 seconds ahead of ours.

Well done today, gentlemen!

Junior Varsity

Here are the results for our junior varsity athletes (165 total finishers in the race). The number in front of each name signifies their overall place in the Varsity B boys race. In brackets are their first mile, second mile, and last 1.1 mile splits:

1 Jalen Neptune (Sr.) - 19:12.10 [(1) 6:11, (2) 6:35, (3.1) 6:26] SB by 49 seconds
12 Malachi Wilson (Sr.) - 20:30.34 [(1) 6:17, (2) 6:59, (3.1) 7:14]
13 Elijah Hawkins (So.) - 20:30.41 [(1) 6:22, (2) 6:57, (3.1) 7:11] PR by 30 seconds
14 Jeremy Juste (Jr.) - 20:32.57 [(1) 6:23, (2) 7:00, (3.1) 7:10] PR by 4 seconds
17 Don DeRocha Jr (Jr.) 20:42.53 [(1) 6:37, (2) 7:06, (3.1) 7:00]
19 Lucas Moisiuk (Fr.) - 20:56.97 [(1) 6:29, (2) 7:04, (3.1) 7:24]
23 Nicholas Berry (Jr.) - 21:09.42 [(1) 6:28, (2) 7:04, (3.1) 7:37]
25 William Jackson (Sr.) - 21:14.76 [(1) 6:20, (2) 7:02, (3.1) 7:53]
28 Alexander Soto (Fr.) - 21:17.71 [(1) 6:49, (2) 7:15, (3.1) 7:14]
29 Tyler Ellis (Sr.) - 21:22.05 [(1) 6:36, (2) 7:04, (3.1) 7:42]
35 Cameron Lamb (Jr.) - 21:38.26 [(1) 6:37, (2) 7:26, (3.1) 7:35]
38 Renaud Williams (So.) - 21:46.63 [(1) 6:57, (2) 7:21, (3.1) 7:29] PR by 43 seconds
52 Ryan Pickett (Jr.) - 22:27.51 [(1) 6:23, (2) 7:31, (3.1) 8:34] SB by 17 seconds
63 Tre Whitfield (Fr.) - 23:00.81 [(1) 6:49, (2) 7:45, (3.1) 8:27] PR by 47 seconds
86 Alexander Davis (Jr.) - 23:58.61 [(1) 7:14, (2) 8:14, (3.1) 8:31] PR by 2 seconds
89 Tyson Woods (Jr.) - 24:12.49 [(1) 7:04, (2) 7:58, (3.1) 9:10]
94 Olutimilehin Adefiyiju (Fr.) - 24:18.47 [(1) 6:30, (2) 8:08, (3.1) 9:40]
106 Julian Righi (So.) - 25:35.11 [(1) 7:25, (2) 8:21, (3.1) 9:49]
127 Aleko Rodousakis (Sr.) - 27:32.21 [(1) 7:58, (2) 9:25, (3.1) 10:09]
138 Carter Leecost (Sr.) - 28:44.84 [(1) 8:24, (2) 9:23, (3.1) 10:58]
144 Emilio Chicas (Fr.) - 29:39.55 [(1) 8:24, (2) 10:01, (3.1) 11:15]
157 Kasapo Mwanza (Jr.) - 32:36.39 [(1) 8:36, (2) 12:11, (3.1) 11:49] SB by 2 minutes 25 seconds
161 Devin Lewis (Sr.) - 34:32.98 [(1) 9:40, (2) 12:52, (3.1) 12:01]
162 Jaidon Contreras (Fr.) - 36:46.83 [(1) 11:27, (2) 12:27, (3.1) 12:53]

Don was only about a second off the PR he set three weeks ago at River Hill. He had a really good race today. A couple of things stood out to me about his race.

For one, he joined Jalen and Alex Soto from this race, as well as Phillip and Andrew from the varsity race, in running a faster split for the last 1.1 miles than his second mile.

Even more noteworthy, Don caught six of his teammates who were ahead of him at the mile mark by the finish. He ran a very smart race today and made a huge impact for the team as our fifth scorer.

Congats to Elijah and Renaud who broke 21 and 22 minutes for the first time, respectively. Both of them have terrific work ethics in practice and it's great to see that paying off in their races this season.

Alex Davis took 56 seconds off his previous season-best en route to breaking 24 minutes for the first time! I know it wasn't a huge drop from his fastest time as a sophomore, but with a month left in the season and a great PR course coming up next week, I think today sets him up very well to close the season out on a strong note and maybe even get down under 23, where I know he wants to be.

Kasapo's been dealing with a hamstring injury that significantly impacted his season debut at the Top of the Hill Invitational. He's been smart about his training, ramping up the intensity gradually in practice rather than overdoing it, and he took a good chunk of time off that race from three weeks ago. Hopefully he'll continue to feel good this week and take another chunk off at MDXC.

Jaidon wasn't feeling great before the race and was away from the tent when we got the surprise news that they were combining the boys and girls for the Varsity B race. In the rush and confusion, I didn't catch that we were missing one athlete from the group and when he returned to the team tent he didn't immediately recognize the significance of it being completely abandoned.

I'm not sure exactly how long after the race began he became aware of the situation and ran out to the start line and onto the course, but it was at least two minutes and likely closer to three. That certainly had an impact on his race today, along with the illness he had earlier this week and is still shaking off. The good news is he'll have a chance for a nice bounce-back next week.

Team Results

1. Poolesville 22 points
2. DeMatha 53 points (6th finisher: 19th)
3. Chesapeake 53 points (6th finisher: 27th)
4. Frederick 114 points
5. Eleanor Roosevelt 156 points
6. St. Mary's Ryken 170 points
7. Dunbar (MD) 206 points
8. Bowie 246 points

Despite a trio of Chesapeake runners crossing the finish just ahead of our trio of Malachi, Elijah, and Jeremy, we were able to pull into a tie with Chesapeake thanks to Jalen's win and Don's performance.

The tie was broken by Luke, who not only beat Chesapeake's sixth runner by half a minute but also beat their fifth runner by 13 seconds.

Nick Berry, as our seventh finisher, also deserves quite a bit of credit for this win. He beat Chesapeake's fifth finisher by 0.27 seconds. By displacing their runner (i.e., adding a point to his score), he gave us the opportunity to battle it out with the sixth-man tiebreaker. If the two of them had flipped, Chesapeake would have beaten us by a point.

Final Thoughts

Today was certainly a challenging one for us. Despite a lot of exciting performances, including several PRs and season bests, I think everybody came out of this meet pretty worn out.

It didn't get above 78 degrees while we were at the meet today, but the humidity was oppressive and we were coming off several cool, rainy days this week, during which we have a natural tendancy to drink less water.

This served as a great lesson for our guys, both those new to the sport and our veterans, that it remains important to hydrate well even as the weather seems to turn cooler.

Our JV guys allowed me to provide a lesson on how ties are broken in cross country (fortunately from the winning side of the tiebreak) and how even in a long-distance race like the 5k, razor-thin margins can make a huge difference. Hopefully they and our varsity runners take that to heart and remember that catching even one person at the finish line, or running all the way through the line to avoid being caught, can make all the difference.

Well done today. Let's prepare ourselves for another week of training as we continue to prepare for WCACs. This will be a slightly less intense week than the previous two as we try to allow our guys to have fresh legs for a great PR course at MDXC next Saturday.