Jonathan & Will earn medals in the varsity race
On Saturday 31 boys teams toed the line at the annual Verona Invitational. This meet has become a great early season litmus test of our teams quality as nearly a dozen ranked teams from around the state compete on this superb cross country course. It was also a good preview for our team to for what to expect from this course for conference & sectionals. Our varsity team got the day started off with an 11th place finish while our JV took 8th place in their race. Both teams show room for improvement but overall we had a solid day against great competition. We now know what we need to do to compete against the best and we also learned many of our own strong points along the way. This is step one in a long journey of a cross country season. Together our team will continue to show progress and we are excited to see many of these teams again later in the season.
Jonathan B had a lifetime best time of 17:03 in the varsity race to lead our team with his 18th place finish. Freshman Will L-S was the second fastest freshman at the meet and also ran a lifetime best to take 34th in 17:36. Both earned medals for their top 40 performances on the day. Our gap between our #2 and #3 runners hurt us today as in a 31 team meet, points quickly piled up in this part of the race. This is something we can easily remedy throughout the season and will help us climb the leaderboard for the team. Tommy S (78th) and Alex B (80th) were our next runners across the line. Nick Z (98th) rounded out our scoring five with his top 100 finish. Hunter N was 115th and PJ M in his first varsity race battled to a 167th place finish. This group has unlimited potential for the season and we now set our sights on chasing down those top teams from our City, Conference, & Sectional.
Our JV race saw a number of personal best times as we continue to grow in experience with this group. It will be important for us to have runners closer to the lead of the race if we are going to compete with the top teams in the area in JV races. This will come with experience! Today we were led by freshman Berndt R who ran a lifetime best of 19:32. He was followed closely by Aatma P and Fred S. Finn A was our 4th runner across and Paul L ran a lifetime best to be our final scorer and JV. Other lifetime best were turn in by Anthony L, Mitchell S, Ian G, Matthew G, Caleb B, and Easton J. These guys are working really hard in practice and this is already showing in there races. We look forward to continuing to improve week in and week out.
RESULTS
Verona Invite (all events...click on individual races)
NEXT COMPETITION
Saturday September 9th
Stan Druckery Invite (South Milwaukee)
@ Grant Park (Course Map)
Bus - 7:00 am
9:30am - First Race (girls)
10:15am - Boys JV (2022 Results) (box 13)
11:35am - Boys Varsity (2022 Results) (box 13)
12:20pm - Awards Presentation
**We will stop to eat on the way home...bring a sack lunch or $ to eat (usually Culvers)
Approximate return to Madison Memorial will be 3:30pm
This is our first time ever going to this meet...some notes from the meet host for parents.
1) Parking on city streets will be easiest...click on course map & look at "highlighted" streets for best city street parking options
2) You should not enter Grant Park via the golf course/club house...signs will be posted along Lake Dr. to direct fans to the cross country course
3) I recommend arriving "early" to allow time to navigate traffic, parking, finding course, etc...
UPCOMING EVENTS
Mon Sept 4th - Captains Practice - 8am @ UW Arboretum Visitors Center
Mon Sept 11th - Team Pictures - 3:30pm @ Memorial
Tues Sept 12th - Grade Level Challenge @ Lake Farm Park --> NO BUS...start planning carpools
NEWS & NOTES
- School begins this week...stay on top of your coursework and start your semester off strong!!!
- FREE Dinner Program...Madison Memorial has a dinner program for kids who participate in after school activities...athletes need to pick up meal in cafeteria before 6:15pm if they choose to participate
- Monday Study Table...starting next week, athletes can head to the Cafeteria during Early Release PCT time to work on school work...I highly recommend this for cross country athletes!
