2024 Top of the Hill Invitational

If you took photos during this week's meet, you can upload those photos to our Top of the Hill folder in Google Drive using this link.

I hate that we're now two meets and three races into the season and I haven't seen any of our athletes compete in 2024. It's been a long few weeks for our new family of three but I'll be back in school this week and hopefully we'll be able to make a smooth transition. I may miss the end of practice sometimes but I should be at the rest of our meets.

I'll be interested to hear from our athletes their thoughts about the course at River Hill. Last year was the first time this invitational was held and while I believe one of the state's district championships is held there, DeMatha has never run on this course before. Looking at some of the athletes on other teams, it looks like this course may be a little bit on the fast side. For those new to the sport, unlike track where every race is held on a flat surface and so the only variables you have to worry about are altitude and weather, every cross country course is different. Hilly courses and those that finish at a higher altitude than the start tend to be slower while flat courses or those where the finish line is at a lower altitude than the start tend to be faster. This isn't always the case, but it usually is.

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.

Varsity

Here are the results for our varsity athletes (115 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:

18 Brandon Smoot (Sr.) - 17:47.23 [(1) 5:38, (2) 5:32, (3.1) 6:37]
31 Roman Zentek (Jr.) - 18:18.19 [(1) 5:51, (2) 5:38, (3.1) 6:49] PR by 4 seconds
41 Arvin Mirchandani (So.) - 18:39.02 [(1) 5:51, (2) 5:45, (3.1) 7:03]
52 Phillip Marshall II (So.) - 19:18.81 [(1) 6:07, (2) 5:59, (3.1) 7:13]
56 Maxwell Ellison (Sr.) - 19:27.01 [(1) 6:00, (2) 5:57, (3.1) 7:30] SB by 3 seconds
65 Jesse Holland III (Jr.) - 19:41.49 [(1) 6:07, (2) 6:14, (3.1) 7:20]
71 Malachi Wilson (Sr.) - 19:54.39 [(1) 6:14, (2) 6:10, (3.1) 7:30] PR by 35 seconds
84 Nicholas Berry (Jr.) - 20:40.40 [(1) 6:16, (2) 6:25, (3.1) 7:59]
85 Don DeRocha Jr (Jr.) - 20:41.34 [(1) 6:14, (2) 6:13, (3.1) 8:14] PR by 12 seconds

Most of our varsity guys ran very similar times to those they hit last week at Trials of Miles. Other than Phillip, everybody at least ran within 10 seconds of their times last week.

I will say, Coach Ant called me after the varsity race and told me that it looked like some of our varsity guys might have run the first mile a little too passively. Unless there was a pretty substantial hill in the first mile, I would tend to agree just based on the splits in front of me.

Seven of our nine runners in this race ran faster in the second mile than in the first. Trust your bodies; you don't need to conserve that much energy in the first mile of your race. Nobody is telling you to sprint the first mile, but don't be afraid to be a bit more aggressive.

Notice that of those seven, only Roman ran 10+ seconds faster in his second mile than his first, and even then it was only a 13-second drop. This is because even when you conserve energy, it is very difficult and exhausting to pick your pace up in the middle of a race. Even the fartlek and progression workouts we do can only train this ability so much because of how much faster racing speed is compared to training speed.

Looking at some of the performances from today, Arvin and Jesse both set PRs last week and while they didn't set new ones at River Hill, they were just 1 second and 3.5 seconds off, respectively.

Max hasn't set a new PR yet this season, but today he came a step closer, knocking off 3 seconds from last week and is now just five seconds off the PR he set last fall.

Team Results

1. Walt Whitman 24 points
2. River Hill 59 points
3. Sherwood 71 points
4. Liberty 140 points
5. Richard Montgomery 157 points
6. Reservoir 172 points
7. DeMatha 183 points
8. St. Pauls for Boys 189 points
9. Oakland Mills 228 points
10. Marriotts Ridge 296 points
11. Paint Brand 323 points
12. Chapelgate Christian 360 points

That's an impressive score for Walt Whitman. They're one of the stronger public school programs in the state out of Montgomery County. Their five scorers all finished in the top 9, which allowed them to come just nine points away from a perfect score of 15.

Junior Varsity

Here are the results for our junior varsity athletes (179 total finishers in the race). The number in front of each name signifies their overall place in the JV race. In brackets are their first mile, second mile, and last 1.1 mile splits:

12 Andrew Stinson (Fr.) - 19:40.60 [(1) 6:25, (2) 5:57, (3.1) 7:19] PR by <1 second
24 Jalen Neptune (Sr.) - 20:13.50 [(1) 6:16, (2) 6:13, (3.1) 7:45]
26 Lucas Moisiuk (Fr.) - 20:23.17 [(1) 6:25, (2) 6:12, (3.1) 7:46]
35 Tyler Ellis (Sr.) - 21:02.24 [(1) 6:28, (2) 6:36, (3.1) 7:58] PR by 31 seconds
47 Alexander Soto (Fr.) - 21:30.52 [(1) 6:52, (2) 6:47, (3.1) 7:52]
63 Cameron Lamb (Jr.) - 22:12.18 [(1) 7:01, (2) 6:45, (3.1) 8:26]
65 Elijah Hawkins (So.) - 22:18.39 [(1) 7:13, (2) 6:51, (3.1) 8:14] PR by 15 seconds
72 Renaud Williams (So.) - 22:30.14 [(1) 7:15, (2) 6:57, (3.1) 8:18] PR by 2 seconds
80 Brendan Dougherty (Sr.) - 22:45.12 [(1) 7:05, (2) 7:07, (3.1) 8:33] SB by 7 seconds
85 Ryan Pickett (Jr.) - 22:55.49 [(1) 7:00, (2) 6:55, (3.1) 9:00] SB by 27 seconds
91 Tyson Woods (Jr.) - 23:11.10 [(1) 7:14, (2) 7:04, (3.1) 8:53]
101 Olutimilehin Adefiyiju (Fr.) - 23:22.12 [(1) 7:26, (2) 7:32, (3.1) 8:24] PR by 3 minutes 6 seconds
112 Tre Whitfield (Fr.) - 23:47.49 [(1) 7:09, (2) 7:20, (3.1) 9:18] PR by 4 minutes 48 seconds
120 Xavier Raymond (Jr.) - 24:08.18 [(1) 7:07, (2) 7:35, (3.1) 9:26] SB by 50 seconds
123 Julian Maring (So.) - 24:27.64 [(1) 7:37, (2) 7:39, (3.1) 9:12] SB by 17 seconds
143 Julian Righi (So.) - 25:45.62 [(1) 7:40, (2) 8:04, (3.1) 10:02]
150 Aleko Rodousakis (Sr.) - 26:16.53 [(1) 8:19, (2) 8:10, (3.1) 9:48] SB by 1 minute 59 seconds
162 Carter Leecost (Sr.) - 28:27.42 [(1) 9:08, (2) 8:50, (3.1) 10:29] SB by 2 minutes 45 seconds
164 Emilio Chicas (Fr.) - 29:17.26 [(1) 8:29, (2) 9:01, (3.1) 11:47] PR by 3 minutes 5 seconds
165 Jaidon Contreras (Fr.) - 29:27.51 [(1) 8:28, (2) 9:17, (3.1) 11:43] PR by 2 minutes 57 seconds
166 Stavros Rodousakis (Fr.) - 29:39.74 [(1) 8:52, (2) 9:19, (3.1) 11:29] PR by 2 minutes 9 seconds
167 Akintunde Shoetan (Sr.) - 29:51.64 [(1) 9:10, (2) 9:03, (3.1) 11:39] SB by 3 minutes 22 seconds
176 Terence Rascher (Fr.) - 32:38.27 [(1) 9:37, (2) 10:09, (3.1) 12:52] PR by 2 minutes 26 seconds
177 Devin Lewis (Sr.) - 33:09.82 [(1) 9:43, (2) 10:28, (3.1) 12:59] SB by 17 seconds
179 Kasapo Mwanza (Jr.) - 35:01.69 [(1) 9:14, (2) 11:44, (3.1) 14:04]

Looks like Andrew had a great race today! Next week is going to be a pretty unique one for us because the meet director at Landon has decided that the meet is small enough to simply run one race of boys and one race of girls, meaning there won't be a varsity and JV split. If there had been, though, and if we had been limited to the standard seven runners on varsity, Andrew would have run himself onto that group for next week. Either way, he'll be running with those guys next week with a chance to defend that position and stay on varsity for the PG Invitational later this month.

I noticed a similar trend with first and second mile splits in this race as I did for our varsity group. Of 25 athletes who ran, 12 ran faster in the second mile and a hanful of others were within a few seconds. I will be very interested to hear more about the course this week because maybe there was a big hill early in the race we can point to as the cause of this anomaly. But it's also not as unusual to see this sort of thing in an early-season JV race because these athletes are still learning how to run the 5k distance. That comes with a fair amount of trial and error, including running the first mile too fast at one meet and then over-correcting the next week. Over time, these athletes will find the middle ground that works for them.

Some of them took a big step toward that this week. We had six freshmen in this race improve their PRs by more than two minutes!

Renaud took about 30 seconds off his time from last week to set his first new PR of the season.  Tyson was just 7 seconds off the PR he set last week. And congrats to Carter, Emilio, Jaidon, Stavros, and Tunde, who each broke 30 minutes for the first time this season!

Team Results

1. Walt Whitman 25 points
2. River Hill 42 points
3. DeMatha 115 points
4. Reservoir 128 points
5. Oakland Mills 140 points
...
9. Guilford Park 239 points

Well done, gentlemen! You did a great job of showcasing our depth. The fact that three of our five JV scorers are freshmen bodes very well for the future.

Final Thoughts

From talking to the coaches who were there today, it sounds like we're dealing with a lot of nagging injuries. Many of them are okay to run through but certainly affected performances. They decided not to have Kazuki race out of caution and with hindsight feel they probably should have done the same for Kasapo with his hamstring.

I know it can be frustrating to not race well or at all because of things that don't feel like they're a big deal or that you've been practicing through. The important thing to do in those moments is to keep the season in perspective (we want to make sure everyone is healthy for WCACs at the end of the season), give yourself some grace, and do all you can to be a good teammate to those around you.

As someone who dealt with several nagging injuries in the second half of my high school career and in college, I know that they can feel like they'll last forever in the moment. Just be sure that you are doing all you can to address it and trust that it will get better. Go see the trainers when you can. If you're having trouble finding the time to go, talk to me or Coach Hoke and we can help you look through your schedule or contact the trainers directly to find a time to see them. If the trainers give you exercises to do on your own, make sure that you are doing them.

Rehabbing from injury often feels more challenging than practicing when you are healthy. Some of that is mental, because rehabbing is never fun and you probably feel like you're falling behind with your training. But there's also some truth that rehabbing is sometimes physically more taxing than training because your body is weaker. Attack those rehab exercises the trainers give you the same way you do your workouts.

I'm looking forward to seeing everyone again this week. I've missed being out there with you guys. I don't know yet how much running I'll be doing the rest of this season, but hopefully I'll get a few runs in with our athletes.