I always assumed, the more I coached...the less new things I would see. That was not the case this year and definitely not the case for our Alternative Spring Sectional Meet. Sectionals were created earlier this Spring but a host for the meet was not found until about 10 days prior. We found out Middleton would be hosting on there new course in Cross Plains and that the WIAA was splitting the 15 teams into 2 different races. The week of the meet, we found out Seneca was not bringing a team to Sectionals which made the races "uneven" and somehow Madison Memorial was the team shifted over to Race #2 from Race #1. Just like everything else this season we tried to take this transition in stride. Race #1 was going to be packed where as Race #2 would be a little more spread out...we felt like Middleton had a chance to qualify out of Race #2 but Race #1 had Sun Prairie, Verona, East, LaFollette, West, & Monona Grove. We knew what we had in front of us and we took our 7 weeks of training out to the battle field.
The wind & the sun greeted all the teams at the Sectional and provided just as much of a challenge as the teams in the race. Race #1 was fast & competitive with Sun Prairie looking great and individuals running fast. We knew we had our work cutout for us in Race #2. The guys attacked early and really put their best effort forth. Jake Z led the way chasing down the front end of the chase pack. The junior led us with a season best 17:18. He was closely followed by seniors Dylan A (17:26) and Aidan P (17:33). Junior Mick S was our 4th runner crossing in 17:51 and senior Bobby R gave us five runners across the line at 18:01. Our 1 - 5 gap was under 45 seconds but our group was just a little too far back when times were combined to give us the team finish we were hoping for today. We knew Middleton had won Race #2 and we were confident that we were second in Race #2. The wind was tough during our race and hurt our overall times as we combined with Race #1...if we could have been 15 - 30 seconds faster across the board it might have been a different story. That being said, we had the 3rd best #5 runner on the day (only Sun Prairie & Middleton had 5 finishers faster). Similar to the week prior, we gave up to much at the #1 position (our first runner was at 17th...so we gave up a lot of points to other teams that was hard to make up). A positive is we bring back Jake & Mick and also our #6 (Henry B) and #7 (Jack G) runners next year with a plethora of talent to support them. Can we make the next step in our training and our racing to compete with the top 10 runners in the race? Can we start with our #1 runner around 16:45 (or faster) and still put 5 runners within 45 seconds? Sun Prairie put 2 runners under 17:00 minutes and 6 runners under 17:30...that is the type of team effort it will take...CAN WE DO IT?
RESULTS
Middleton Sectional - HERE
