2026 Oatlands Invitational

Thank you to all of the parents (and athletes) who have already uploaded photos to our Google Drive folder. If you took photos but haven't uploaded them yet, please use this link to do so.

Intro

The Oatlands Invitational began in 2005. The first time DeMatha attended was in my sophomore year, back in 2007.

When DeMatha made its last appearance at Oatlands in 2012, our varsity team placed 51st out of 51 teams in a race that cleared 350 finishers. The underclass boys did a little bit better than that, but the most noteworthy statistic from that day was the 941 finishers in that frosh boys race, which I believe remains a meet record for finishers in any one race.

I have vague memories of really enjoying the course, but honestly didn't remember very many details from it. So while the boys were on their course walk this morning, I decided to go out and run the course myself. The first mile is blazing fast -- it's almost entirely downhill until shortly past the 0.75-mile mark. There are a number of hills, including "The Hill" just before the 2.5-mile mark, which separates the men and women from the boys and girls of the sport. There are two small stream crossings (a stride or two can get you through each), a wooded section, a gravel section, and a lot of well-maintained grass along the route.

No doubt about it, this is about as cross country as it gets. Fast times are possible, but the technical challenges provided by the course prevent PRs from being a foregone conclusion. It's a shame more meets in the region don't embrace this style of course.

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 meet. Additionally, in red, I have noted all athletes who set a new SB (season best), but not PR, in the cross country 5k.

Note: I mistakenly left our stopwatches on campus when we left for the meet, so Coach Phillips and I were using our iPhones to try and get mile splits.

The bad news: iPhone stopwatches are wildly inaccurate if at any point they are running in the background of another app or while the screen goes to sleep. Our splits were a bit inconsistent at the 1- and 2-mile marks, and my 3-mile splits in particular were atrocious; they made a lot of the last 0.1 splits make absolutely no sense, so we can't rely on them as accurate indicators.

The good news: the meet got official splits for the 1-mile and 2-mile marks, so we're using those and omitting my 3-mile splits. For your results below, you'll find first mile, second mile, and last 1.1 mile splits. If you want to know what your average pace was for that last segment, use this pace calculator, enter the time and 1.1 miles, then hit calculate.

JV Upperclassmen

Here are the results for our athletes in the upperclass junior varsity race (459 total finishers in the race). The number in front of each name signifies their overall place in the event. In brackets are their first mile, second mile, and last 0.1 mile splits:

303 Dane Kuzner (Jr) - 22:23.71 [(1) 6:15, (2) 7:53, (3.1) 8:16] PR by 10 seconds
318 John Tomas Felicio (Jr) - 22:39.05 [(1) 6:19, (2) 7:51, (3.1) 8:29] PR by 11 seconds
429 Julian Righi (Sr) - 25:57.43 [(1) 6:57, (2) 9:19, (3.1) 9:41]
434 Terence Rascher (Jr) - 26:22.54 [(1) 7:01, (2) 9:33, (3.1) 9:49]

I was really impressed with our four guys in this race. The first racers of the day have to set the tone for the meet and a course like Oatlands can easily psych some runners out. Dane and JT ran very well and proved correct my claim that PRs are possible on this course. Dane had just set his PR last week at Skip Grant and JT took nearly 40 seconds off last week's time.

Julian hasn't been fully healthy in several weeks and still wasn't 100% for this race. He said the hills felt a little better than the flats, so we just have to find a race that's all uphill and he should be a-ok. In all seriousness, I'm proud of his effort on Saturday. This was his first 5k of the year and he beat his projected 5k time from the Braddock Relays by 2.5 seconds on a more technically challenging course.

Terence couldn't quite duplicate last week's performance, but he still ran his second fastest 5k time of the fall and his finishing kick was unlike anything I've seen from him before. MDXC has been a really good course for him so I'm excited to see what he does in two weeks.

Team Results

1. Blacksburg 26 points
2. Albemarle 29 points
3. Spire 131 points
4. Maury 167 points
5. Independence 196 points
...
26. St. Albans 729 points
...
41. Paul VI 1058 points
...
49. Bishop Ireton 1231 points
...
51. Potomac 1447 points

We had a couple of athletes who made the trip but were unable to race this morning, one due to a knee injury and the other due to residual symptoms from a recent illness. Because of this we didn't field a full team and did not score.

Because so many teams had 9 athletes in this race, the last two of whom would not have factored into scoring in any way, plus teams with fewer than five runners where none of them factored in, I don't have a great way to estimate what our final tally would have been with a fifth athlete in the race.

Varsity A

Here are the results for our athletes in the Varsity A race (620 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, third mile, and last 0.1 mile splits:

165 Arvin Mirchandani (Sr) - 17:56.64 [(1) 5:11, (2) 6:06, (3.1) 6:40]
230 Kendall Giles (Sr) - 18:25.92 [(1) 5:23, (2) 6:18, (3.1) 6:45]
404 Lucas Moisiuk (Jr) - 19:26.46 [(1) 5:22, (2) 6:34, (3.1) 7:30]
421 Renaud Williams (Sr) - 19:30.85 [(1) 5:47, (2) 6:39, (3.1) 7:05]
486 Evan Bouchard (Fr) - 20:02.68 [(1) 5:49, (2) 6:55, (3.1) 7:19]

We make no excuses, but we do place results in context. Today was not a good day for our varsity squad, no matter how you dice it. I'm not discouraged in the least.

Firstly, we did have two performances I'm impressed with in this race. Kendall bounced back from a rough race last week, taking 30 seconds off his time from Skip Grant and getting back in striking distance of his PR.

Renaud battled through an illness through the early part of the week but had to miss Thursday, which had me wondering if he'd even be available for this race. He wasn't feeling his best but he still turned in his third straight race in the 19:26-19:31 range.

Luke and Evan are coming off their own illnesses. I know Evan, in particular, is probably a little frustrated he's still dealing with symptoms 2+ weeks removed; I always have residual symptoms for a while after illnesses. He'll feel like himself again soon.

The good news is we are getting all these illnesses out of the way in this part of the season, so we'll hopefully be at full health for championships in a month.

Team Results

1. Albemarle 161 points
2. West Potomac 210 points
3. Jamestown 303 points
4. Sherwood 324 points
5. C.G. Woodson 326 points
6. Kellam 388 points
7. Ocean Lakes 390 points
8. Smithfield 395 points
9. Centennial 409 points
10. James W. Robinson 467 points
...
20. St. Albans 700 points
...
43. Bishop Ireton 1236 points
...
66. DeMatha 1652 points
...
71. Paul VI 1860 points
...
91. Maret 2762 points

Any time you see only one team with fewer than 200 points, you know the field is not only massive but is rich with talent. Fifty runners broke 17 minutes on this course just in the Varsity A race, plus three across the other three boys races. Virginia is a distance-running hotbed, so this is a far more competitive meet than MDXC.

We had to rest Kenneth Osuji and Elijah Hawkins due to foot and calf injuries, respectively. I don't think either will keep them out for more than this race, but if this had been a championship meet they likely would have run. But this meet was not worth risking a more severe injury to either of them.

With them healthy, I estimate we would have taken 400 to 450 points off our final tally. All told, we held up well as a team.

JV Underclassmen

Here are the results for our athletes in the underclass junior varsity race (466 total finishers in the race). The number in front of each name signifies their overall place in the event. In brackets are their first mile, second mile, third mile, and last 0.1 mile splits:

225 Zahir Accilien (So) - 21:53.23 [(1) 6:26, (2) 7:41, (3.1) 7:46] PR by 1 minute 11 seconds
328 Stephen Lawrence Jr. (So) - 23:25.05 [(1) 6:26, (2) 8:03, (3.1) 8:56] SB by 46 seconds
377 Caene Nartey (Fr) - 24:27.04 [(1) 6:39, (2) 8:31, (3.1) 9:17] PR by 25 seconds
383 Nnamdi Onwuka (Fr) - 24:36.01 [(1) 6:58, (2) 8:33, (3.1) 9:05] PR by 2 minutes 10 seconds
399 Ian Andrews (So) - 25:03.42 [(1) 6:40, (2) 8:58, (3.1) 9:25]
418 Ryan Hickey (So) - 25:51.59 [(1) 7:04, (2) 9:09, (3.1) 9:39]
431 Sebastian Righi (So) - 26:51.34 [(1) 7:36, (2) 9:10, (3.1) 10:05] PR by 4 seconds
458 Luke Anthony Quach (So) - 29:57.83 [(1) 8:43, (2) 10:38, (3.1) 10:37]

Zahir and Nnamdi ran great! Zahir had only run two races with us so far, and they were on the two easiest courses we've seen in the first half of the season. Coming out to this course and dropping such a significant chunk of time is no easy feat.

Nnamdi was excellent on Saturday. Even with Caene running a terrific PR of his own, he was able to keep his classmate in sight pretty much throughout the race and closed the gap through the last mile and change.

Stephen had, by far, his best race of the season. The time shows it but I knew it before I had seen the official times. He was up with Zahir at the mile mark, and while he wasn't quite able to maintain that position, especially in the third mile, that aggressiveness is something I really liked seeing from him. Don't shy away from it; if you make that a part of your race, your body will adapt to be able to stay in rhythm as fatigue sets in late.

Ian ran an almost-identical time to last week and has three straight races between 25:03 and 25:09. By MDXC he should be ready to jump down closer to his PR from last year.

Sebastian's race last week wasn't bad, but he did fall off a good bit from the PR he set at Seahawk two weeks earlier. He bounced right back this week and even beat his time from the South River course. He got out well in the first mile and ran steady splits the rest of the way.

Team Results

1. Albemarle 81 points
2. C.G. Woodson 96 points
3. Midlothian 173 points
4. James W. Robinson 174 points
5. Spire 178 points
...
13. St. Albans 438 points
...
38. Bishop Ireton 1085 points
...
49. DeMatha 1376 points
...
52. Hartwood 1627 points

As I alluded to in the Varsity A section, this meet was an opportunity to expose our athletes to one of the most competitive environments available to us. These guys responded well by running several serious PRs. We can't ask for anything more than that.

Varsity B

Here are the results for our athletes in the Varsity B race (220 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, third mile, and last 0.1 mile splits:

70 Dominic Hilton (Jr) - 19:46.98 [(1) 5:40, (2) 6:52, (3.1) 7:15]
86 Alexander Soto (Jr) - 20:02.89 [(1) 5:55, (2) 6:51, (3.1) 7:17] SB by 40 seconds
115 Blake Inzeo (So) - 20:35.21 [(1) 6:00, (2) 7:08, (3.1) 7:27]
137 Satchel Drabinski (So) - 20:54.44 [(1) 5:43, (2) 7:12, (3.1) 7:59]
175 Dominic Hislop (So) - 21:49.43 [(1) 6:11, (2) 7:28, (3.1) 8:10] PR by 22 seconds
184 Fareed Rahi (So) - 22:06.32 [(1) 6:00, (2) 8:00, (3.1) 8:06]
187 Michael Bridges (So) - 22:11.55 [(1) 6:30, (2) 7:38, (3.1) 8:04]

I told Alex on Wednesday that I suspected we were going to see his annual mid-season time drops begin this week. He's still got about 50 seconds to go to his PR, but he took exactly the step I wanted to see this week. He's now in a spot where I think a PR at MDXC is a reasonable goal for him.

Blake and Michael both came very close to running their best times of the season. Blake set his PR last week at Skip Grant and was only 8 seconds off that time today. Michael, meanwhile, set his season best at Seahawk three weeks ago and missed setting a new season best by just a quarter of a second!

Dominic Hislop came into the meet with the goal of breaking 21:30. He didn't quite manage that, but he still ran a solid PR and should be able to easily break 21:30 at MDXC in a couple of weeks.

Team Results

1. Chantilly 28 points
2. Urbana 79 points
3. Centennial 137 points
4. Thomas Edison 181 points
5. Winston Churchill 189 points
6. Patriot 228 points
7. Sherwood 241 points
8. Thomas Jefferson S&T 255 points
9. Smithfield 269 points
10. St. Albans 293 points
...
21. DeMatha 565 points
...
33. Covenant Christian Academy 933 points

You'll notice there is no Bishop Ireton or Paul VI in the team scores here. In fact, neither school ran any athlete in this race. That adds some context to our JV Upper and JV Lower results, because athletes those schools' next seven up were in those races instead of this one.

In fact, that was a pretty common thread across the meet. The JV Upper race had the fewest complete teams with 51, but even that race had another 37 teams represented by between one and four athletes. This Varsity B race featured just the 33 complete teams and another four incomplete teams. That put us at a significant disadvantage in the two JV races, especially given we performed quite well as a team in this race, finishing just outside the Top 20.

Final Thoughts

The last few weeks have been about as physically demanding as we've had during my tenure as head coach. We're wrapping up the portion of our training cycle with the highest weekly mileage while racing on two of the most challenging courses on our schedule.

Our guys handled it quite well, and our first- and second-year athletes in particular continue to show major improvements.

MDXC, on October 10, is the fastest course on our schedule, and we'll be in the first stage of our taper by then -- winding down mileage in preparation for championship season. With fresher legs and an easier course, this is where our more experienced runners should see their first major time drop of the season.

A couple moments I really appreciated from Saturday's meet:

• There was an athlete in the JV Underclass race, I believe from Clarke County, who encouraged Luke Anthony as they reached the 3-mile mark and were almost to the crest of the final hill. He was able to sprint away on the final straightaway, but it was awesome to see his sportsmanship and also to see Luke Anthony respond with the last bit of gas he had in the tank.

• I believe this was also during the JV Underclass race, though perhaps it was in the Varsity B race, but Julian Righi was over by me at the 3-mile mark to cheer on our guys as they approached the finish. He saw an athlete from another school struggling to reach the top of the final hill and offered him some strong encouragement, running alongside him. It was another show of sportsmanship that I love to see.

You may have noticed in the team results I included St. Albans in every race even though they are not a WCAC opponent. I did this as an additional point of context. St. Albans is a program that regularly competes for the team title at MDXC. They won the Black & Gold Varsity race two years ago and have finished in the Top 3 in three of the last four years. Even they struggled to compete with the Virginia schools we faced at Oatlands.

This is one of the things I love about cross country. You're racing the clock more than you are racing the competition. We can't play defense and we can't allow ourselves to worry about how fast or numerous our competition is. All we can do is make every race better than our last, whether it results in a PR, a season best, or neither. Let's make sure we're ready to do that in two weeks!