Sectionals - 4th place

On Saturday our varsity team went out to earn a trip to the WIAA State Meet at the DeForest Sectional. To qualify for state we needed to finish in the top two teams and overcome four schools who had beaten us over the last month. We were hoping that having a slightly healthier team going into Sectionals would accomplish the job but we came up 5 points short of our goal missing out on the second qualifying spot to Middleton and Baraboo (who lost on a tiebreaker). Our varsity has accomplished many great things this season and have a lot to be proud of even though we came up slightly short of our season goals. Taking last year's results from sectionals and looking at whose returners would do well this year ... the JMM team would have been at 7th place but our guys worked their tails off over the off season, in the summer, and throughout this fall to give our team a shot to get to State. As every team must, we had to deal with injuries, illness, etc this season and our depth helped cover these gaps throughout the year but today it came down to the fact that we were not at 100% and that kept us just outside the top two.  As we move forward we need to continue to build our depth and improve our lead pack as it moves towards being a group that can finish in the top ten and pull some low numbers for our team (8 of the 11 teams had better #1 runners today...that means we play catch up, which we did a pretty good job of today...just not good enough).

Today we were led by seniors Bryce H and Jacob R as they finished 14th and 15th respectively. The race of the day came from sophomore Rory S who took advantage of his opportunity to be in this race with an amazing last 1/2 mile to finish 22nd overall. Senior James A in his first varsity race back from mono held on for 31st place in a very tough fought competition. Our scoring five was rounded out by junior Ben B who placed 33rd. As we have said all season we have some depth and today freshman Luke V placed 36th (the second best #6 runner to only West) and senior Connor GT placed 40th (the best #7 runner on the day). This group ran great today and should be proud of how they represented the JMM boys cross country team. Our senior group did a wonderful job of leading us this season and now it is time for the juniors, sophomores, and freshmen to take that next step to make sure next year we are a team that can handle all of the injuries, illnesses, and what ifs of the seasons and come out of this meet with a state berth. It will take more hard work and dedication towards improving but I believe we have the work ethic among our athletes to make this next step. A big THANK YOU to the jv runners, parents, and alumni who came out to support us in DeForest it was great to see a mass of green screaming, yelling, and cheering the boys on all day long!

SECTIONAL RESULTS
DeForest Sectional
All WIAA Sectionals

UPCOMING EVENTS
10/28 (Mon) - Varsity Practice @ 3:45pm - bring uniforms
11/2 (Sat) - State at Wisconsin Rapids Ridges GC - Siena & Meghan will represent JMM Girls CC
11/7 (Thurs) - End of Year Banquet @ Rocky's 5:30pm (rsvp to jmmcc@rocketmail.com)

Athletes who have not paid the captains for team shirts ($20) or coaches gifts ($10) -- contact captains ASAP (James, Marcus, John, or Bryce).