2025 Bittersweet Invitational

If you took photos during this week's race, you can upload those photos to our Trials of Miles folder in Google Drive using this link.

--Thank you, Joseph, for pointing out that my updates for the intro paragraph did not take when I copied my template over from Trials of Miles--

I had written a slightly longer introduction here after I finished updating all of the results. I thought Google's issues saving my work were limited to the 'Final Thoughts' section but that clearly was not the case.

I don't think I had anything profound to say, so let's just jump into the results from yesterday's race.

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 (136 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:

7 Arvin Mirchandani (Jr.) - 17:14.9 [(1) 5:15, (2) 5:34, (3.1) 6:26] PR by 4 seconds
16 Phillip Marshall II (Jr.) - 17:47.7 [(1) 5:44, (2) 5:38, (3.1) 6:26]
42 Jesse Holland III (Sr.) - 19:02.7 [(1) 5:52, (2) 6:08, (3.1) 7:03]
49 Lucas Moisiuk (So.) - 19:15.8 [(1) 5:49, (2) 6:00, (3.1) 6:27]
51 Andrew Stinson (So.) - 19:20.3 [(1) 5:53, (2) 6:07, (3.1) 7:20] SB by 20 seconds
64 Jeremy Juste (Sr.) - 19:54.7 [(1) 6:00, (2) 6:17, (3.1) 7:38] PR by 14 seconds
Dominic Hilton (So.) - DNF [(1) 5:48, (2) 6:14]

Arvin moved up from #16 to a tie for #13 on DeMatha's 5k leaderboard dating back to 2000. Those rankings take into account every athlete's fastest time dating back to 2000. In terms of overall 5k time, Arvin's 17:15 ranks tied for 67th.

What stands out the most to me about Arvin's race this weekend is how similar his splits were to those he ran last week at Trials of Miles, a very different course. His four-second PR came entirely in the middle of his race at Bittersweet, as his first mile and his last 1.1-mile splits were virtually identical in these two races.

If anybody has a video of the finishing straightaway, I hope you captured Jesse's finish. He was willing himself down the final 50 meters with such tenacity he literally ran out of one of his shoes. I've seen athletes get their shoes sucked off their feet on muddy courses before, but I can't say I've see a shoe go flying the way Jesse's did approaching the finish line.

Congratulations to Jeremy on his first career sub-20 5k! Dominic fell shortly before the two mile and was dealing with some pain in his left hip and right calf. Out of caution, I pulled him out of the race. His hip seemed fine soon after and while I don't think his calf injury is severe, it's something that has affected him in the past so we'll be keeping an eye on it this week.

Team Results

1. The Heights 35 points
2. Potomac 73 points
3. Good Counsel 95 points
4. Archbishop Spalding 138 points
5. DeMatha 149 points
6. Archbishop Curley 155 points
7. Annapolis Area Christian 178 points
8. Landon 210 points
9. St. Andrew's 239 points
10. St. Stephens & St. Agnes 280 points
...
16. Washington International 476 points

Clearly we have our work cut out for us with some of our WCAC competitors, but considering two of our five fastest finishers from Trials of Miles did not factor into today's results, we should be within striking distance of Good Counsel.

Junior Varsity

Here are the results for our junior varsity athletes (142 total finishers in the race). The number in front of each name signifies their overall place in the junior varsity race. In brackets are their first mile, second mile, and last 1.1 mile splits:

2 Elijah Hawkins (Jr.) - 19:33.6 [(1) 5:55, (2) 6:30, (3.1) 7:09] PR by 32 seconds
4 Darrius Jones-Humphrey II (Sr.) - 19:40.2 [(1) 5:56, (2) 6:29, (3.1) 7:15] PR by 58 seconds
16 William Herman (Sr.) - 20:36.3 [(1) 6:24, (2) 6:37, (3.1) 7:35] SB by 5 seconds
18 Don DeRocha Jr. (Sr.) - 20:41.6 [(1) 6:28, (2) 6:47, (3.1) 7:27]
22 Nicholas Berry (Sr.) - 21:02.9 [(1) 6:35, (2) 6:55, (3.1) 7:40] SB by 26 seconds
23 Fareed Rahi (Fr.) - 21:07.2 [(1) 6:58, (2) 6:38, (3.1) 7:31] PR by 1 minute 38 seconds
30 Ryan Jones (So.) - 21:26.9 [(1) 6:25, (2) 6:49, (3.1) 8:13]
33 Ryan Pickett (Sr.) - 21:41.1 [(1) 6:28, (2) 6:50, (3.1) 8:23] SB by 40 seconds
36 Renaud Williams (Jr.) - 21:45.7 [(1) 6:53, (2) 7:00, (3.1) 7:53]
38 Cameron Lamb (Sr.) - 21:50.0 [(1) 6:28, (2) 7:06, (3.1) 8:16]
40 Satchell Drabinski (Fr.) - 21:53.9 [(1) 6:33, (2) 7:07, (3.1) 8:14]PR by 1 minute 10 seconds
44 Joseph LeGloahec (Sr.) - 21:59.9 [(1) 6:45, (2) 7:10, (3.1) 8:05] SB by 3 seconds
56 Alexander Soto (S0.) - 22:33.9 [(1) 6:50, (2) 7:22, (3.1) 8:22]
59 Michael Bridges (Fr.) - 22:44.7 [(1) 7:07, (2) 7:11, (3.1) 8:27] PR by 1 minute 42 seconds
71 Tyson Woods (Sr.) - 23:22.1 [(1) 6:54, (2) 7:42, (3.1) 8:46]
82 Xavier Raymond (Sr.) - 23:57.9 [(1) 6:41, (2) 7:34, (3.1) 9:43]
96 Dane Kuzner (So.) - 24:35.5 [(1) 7:31, (2) 8:04, (3.1) 9:01]
108 Ryan Hickey (Fr.) - 25:45.7 [(1) 7:56, (2) 8:06, (3.1) 9:43] PR by 41 seconds
113 Nathaniel Garvin Jr. (Fr.) - 26:22.9 [(1) 8:19, (2) 8:37, (3.1) 9:27]
115 Oluwatoni "Toni" Adefiyiju (Fr.) - 26:23.4 [(1) 8:19, (2) 8:39, (3.1) 9:25] PR by 1 minute 22 seconds
122 Luke Anthony Quach (Fr.) - 27:05.2 [(1) 8:49, (2) 8:42, (3.1) 9:34] PR by 6 minutes 48 seconds
128 John Tomas Felicio (So.) - 27:36.9 [(1) 8:08, (2) 9:02, (3.1) 10:27]
129 Chase Osby (Jr.) - 27:38.1 [(1) 8:07, (2) 9:05, (3.1) 10:26] PR by 5 seconds
131 Stephen Lawrence Jr. (Fr.) - 27:54.4 [(1) 8:14, (2) 8:56, (3.1) 10:44]
136 Stavros Rodousakis (So.) - 28:39.0 [(1) 8:39, (2) 9:18, (3.1) 10:42]
140 Jaidon Contreras (So.) - 31:57.2 [(1) 8:08, (2) 11:08, (3.1) 12:41]
141 Sebastian Righi (Fr.) - 32:52.9 [(1) 9:13, (2) 10:31, (3.1) 13:09]
Oladimeji "Akin" Alade (Fr.) - Unknown [(1) 9:16, (2) 11:44, (3.1) ???)
Dawit Gezae (So.) - DNF [(1) 9:05, (2) 10:58]

Firstly, if anybody happened to see the clock when Akin finished his race and can relay this unofficial time to me, I would greatly appreciate it to complete our records for this weekend's race. I saw him pass me shortly before the 3-mile mark and so I am assuming he did in fact cross the line to complete the course, but they must have shut down the timing system in preparation for the awards ceremony shortly before that point.

Congrats to our two medalists in the freshman race. Elijah led the race for a good portion of the first two miles with Darrius right there with him. As they exited the wooded area heading toward the 2-mile mark, I saw them running almost side-by-side with a swarm of runners from The Heights just yards behind them. Well done to keep all but two of them from mixing into the final result.

It was great to see several of our freshmen take big steps forward in their second 5k of the season. Fareed, Satchell, and Toni ran the 2 mile at last week's Trials of Miles and made the transition back to the 5k successfully with big PRs this week. Michael took a similarly big step forward with his performance, and Luke Anthony crushed his parkrun time after stopping at the 2-mile mark of last week's 5k.

Team Results

1. The Heights 22 points
2. DeMatha 45 points
3. Archbishop Spalding 127 points (6th finisher - 55th)
4. Good Counsel 127 points (6th finisher - 57th)
5. Landon 129 points
6. McNamara 160 points
...
10. Covenant Life 275 points

Our five scorers all finished in the Top 22 and earned 15 points or fewer, giving us a huge advantage over the rest of the field. Well done!

Final Thoughts

Great work this weekend, gentlemen. Your conduct at the course and your cooperation with our procedures during the meet were much improved over last week and I am very appreciative of that.

We are dealing with a lot of injuries right now on the team. Fortunately most of them are minor in nature and are not preventing athletes from racing or participating in most practices. Even with those situations, though, let us not take it for granted as minor injuries can and do get worse.

Continue seeing the trainers for treatment and continue doing the exercises they've given you. If you have missed a workout or a race in the past week, this is even more important.

Some of our athletes did not perform as well as they would have liked yesterday, and I think there were a couple of reasons for that. For one, it was our first early morning of the season. Yes, varsity ran at the same time as they did at the parkrun two weeks ago, but there is a big difference between arriving in College Park at 8 a.m. to warm up and race an hour later and arriving at DeMatha before 6 a.m., riding a bus for an hour, setting up camp, doing the course walk, and then starting the warm up process.

Secondly, and related to the first reason, I think several of our athletes were dehydrated for their races. While the temperatures were pretty nice in the morning, it was very humid and warmed up quickly as we approached the end of the meet. Sipping on water throughout the morning  of a meet, at least up until you begin your warmup, is critical; remaining hydrated throughout the week is just as much so. Let's make that a focus this week.