The rain stopped long enough this weekend that the Midwest Invitational was able to host 42 of the best teams from WI, IL, IA, and TX in Janesville at the Blackhawk Golf Course. The ground was soft in a couple spots and there was still mud on the trail in the woods but overall the course was amazing leading to some good times on beautiful fall weekend. Many Madison Memorial boys took advantage of great competition to run some season best times and set ourselves up for a great last month to the season.
The morning started with our Frosh/Soph kids toeing the line to compete against other athletes their age. Our group ran really strong and shows promise for the future. The team was led by Gavin H who ran a PR of 18:10 to finish 29th. Next came soph Peter V who finished in 38th and then 2 more PRs by Peter S (18:43) and Martin V (18:45) both dipping under the 19:00 for the first time. Freshman Brett N rounded out the scoring with his 90th place and fellow freshman Joey C broke 20:00 for the first time with his PR for 19:58. I was excited to see this group of guys compete really well and earn a 10th place finish out of 27 complete teams. With hard work and improvement in the coming years these guys have a group future ahead of them in cross country.
The theme of the day in the boys varsity race was that every team seemed to be missing some key components and Madison Memorial was no different. We toed the line with less than our best but the guys who toed the line gave their best and that is all we could ask for today. Our best on the day was finishing 11th out of 40 teams and some really good teams at that. Our team was led by Jonas B who ran a PR of 16:04 and finished in 12th place. Senior Luke V gave us another finish in the medals with his 28th place finish and Casey GT ran 16:37 to place 35th. Our top 3 runners this year were better than our top 3 runners here last year. Jared G (17:22) and Stryder C (17:41) both stepped up to run PRs and fill out our scoring 5 by placing 97th and 124th. Our group is starting to get closer together and the closer we can put 5 runners to our #1 runner the better we will be as a varsity team. Elliot B broke 18:00 for the first time and Chris X got to run in his first ever varsity race (not bad for a guy who ran 28:08 at this same meet as a freshman....maybe hard work and consistency in training can pay off).
After moving some runners up to run varsity and others who had already competed in the frosh/soph race we were not sure who our scoring 5 would be in JV and where we could finish as a team. Again, we had a group of boys willing to rise to the challenge in lead our team to a 5th place finish. This is the first time this year that our depth really started to show and I'm excited for what this could mean as we enter the stretch run of our season. Malcolm B ran a nice PR of 18:03 to earn a medal with his 13th place finish. Senior Ty B place 31st to be our 2nd runner. Lance D closed the last mile really strong to finish in 55th with a time of 18:44 and he pulled along Eli T (18:48) and Matt B (18:48) to give us 5 runners in the top 61 finishers. As we add all of our guys back in at the next meet I hope to see this gap shrink back down to less than 20 seconds. A tight pack of runners who are willing to work together and push each other in practices and meets is what leads to success in JV races. The team had 32 PRs on the day and many came from this JV group who is really starting to learn how to race. I encourage this group to keep it up for the final weeks of the season and reap the rewards of their hard work.
MIDWEST RESULTS
Frosh/Soph Boys
Varsity Boys
JV Boys
Middle School Boys
NEXT COMPETITION
Tuesday September 27th
Big 8 Split Meet @ Craig (Blackhawk GC)
Early Release - 2:15pm
Bus - 2:30pm
4:45pm - Boys Race (all boys compete in 1 race)
5:30pm - Girls Race
** No Awards & We WONT Stop to Eat**
UPCOMING EVENTS
Sept 28th (Wed) - Light of Life Walk - 6:00 - 6:45pm @ Mansfield Stadium (required for athletes...families are welcome to join) $5 donation to Cancer Research to Coach Casey ASAP
Oct 1st (Sat) - Stoughton Invite @ Stoughton HS
NEWS & NOTES
PSAT Testing is scheduled for October 15th at Madison Memorial....athletes interested in taking the PSAT (usually juniors) should contact Counselor Olson (alolson@madison.k12.wi.us) ASAP for alternate date & locations
Big 8 Conference Meet will be hosted at Verona HS (this is a change of venue)
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