Big 8 Grade Level Challenge - 4th Place

Going into the meet we weren't sure how we would fair in a grade level style meet and competing on the same course we ran on last week. It is hard to PR on a course you just ran on less than a week earlier, especially when not much has changed in our training to improve us (Saturday's workout won't help us for another week or two). So we didn't expect many PRs and instead were looking for how we competed against other teams in our conference. This meet is hard to do well at when your varsity team is comprised of only juniors and seniors. In spite of this we were able to perform well today and finish a very respectable fourth place and only 5 points out of third place. We score seven runners at this meet and scored 5 runners out of the junior race and 2 runners out of the senior race (although our #7 runner could have been a junior and/or a freshman too...all three finishers were 18th). I was very impressed with how we competed today and that is what we need to take away from today's race. The three teams who beat us are ranked in the state and we know that we need to improve to compete with them and meet our team goal of qualifying for state. West is ranked 3rd in the state, LaFollette is 4th, and Craig is 12th...so we are seeing great competition and we need to continue to rise to this level of competition.

The day started with the Frosh/Soph race and although none of these guys run on our varsity yet, they are closing the gap and will be leading the team in the future. It continues to be fun to see the improvements this group makes as we build our varsity future. We had 15 athletes make improvements in their PRs just from Thursday. Our sophomores were led by Ben B and Calder B again. We had big PRs from Jake H (1:27), Zach H (:58), and Liam M (1:59) which just goes to show that we still have plenty of improvement for this group. Our freshman were led by Trevor R and Matt J with a large group chasing them down in the last mile. I encourage these kids to continue to work hard at practice to make gains physically and as the season moves along they will see even bigger time drops.

During the Junior/Senior race we ran well even though not everyone was happy with their times. This group needs to continue to show the way at workouts, meets, and in the classroom. We can have ourself a great season this year and lay the foundation for the younger runners to follow in your footsteps. Jonah had a very nice race today finishing 4th overall (and among seniors) in a time of 16:21. This led to a larger gap between our 1 and 2 runners (1:03) and our 1 and 5 runners (1:43) which we know we need to improve upon. We know we are capable of having that gap be closer and I am confident we will get it back to where it needs to be by the end of the year. Meets at this time of year are meant for us to learn and improve...at the end of the year we need to be ready to perform. Our junior group of Bryce H, Hans H, James A, Sam B, and Connor G-T led the way for our scoring group (Mason R was also the same as our #7 scorer). Our seniors scorers were Jonah W and Ryan W. Today lets us see where we stand against the conference teams and now we have a month to improve our standing and finish even stronger at the conference meet.

GRADE LEVEL CHALLENGE RESULTS
Frosh/Soph Race
Junior/Senior Race
Team Results
Frosh Only
Soph Only
Junior Only
Senior Only  

UPCOMING EVENTS
September 12th - Athletic Code Meeting - 7:00pm Main Gym - All athletes and a parent
September 17th - Team Pictures - 3:45pm (need uniform top and bottom)  

NEXT COMPETITION
Smiley Invitational - Saturday September 15th
@ American Legion Golf Course - Wausau, WI
ARRIVE FOR BUS AT 5:30AM - WE WILL NOT WAIT FOR ANYONE
8:30am - First Race (small schools)
9:55am - JV Girls Race
10:25am - Varsity Girls D1 Race
10:55am - Varsity Boys D1 Race (2011 Results - Overall D1 and Large School)
11:20am - JV Boys D1 Race (2011 Results)
11:45am - Awards (top 2 varsity teams and 20 individuals, top 1 jv team and 20 individuals)
Bring money to eat at Culvers...we will arrive back at Memorial around 4:00pm