Region 2022
The girls JV team started it off with a very strong race. They finished second (BUT, if we had only run 7 in our varsity race like other schools did, then we would have won quite easily (with the top 3 runners, and 5 in the top 10, but regardless) and there were many great performances. The boys followed that with some strong races as well (same thing btw, if we had only but 7 in varsity we would have won the JV race, but, we wanted to give kids the opportunity to run another varsity race). In other words, the JV squad showed up and did work.
Here's a few fun facts about those races:
17 boys and 18 girls ran a faster pace for 3 miles yesterday than they did 2 miles at pre-region. The biggest improvements were freshman Kate Dewsnup (1:36/mile) and Elizabeth Buckway (1:03s/mile). For the boys it was Cyrus Nilsson (44s/mile) and Trace Cresap (46s/mile). That is super impressive! Our JV runners have generally been pretty good at running in packs to help each other out, and I always love to see the post race credit being shared on strava, by thanking teammates who helped push each other. It's a thing of beauty when we work together to move up the field, and the JV team did just that, almost like priming the pump for the varsity teams to do the same thing.
On the following website you can click on your name to see your mile splits and placement at each mile. Antelope Racing Results I looked at a bunch of our runners, and in each case we finished higher up than where we were at the mile mark.
I clicked on Hailey Bird's name, for instance. At the first mile she was in 48th place. She finished in 28th. Awesome! Henry Kimoto: 27th, then 14th. Brayden Scoresby, moved up 14 places. Kate Farnes, 13. The pattern continues.
The Varsity girls were considered underdogs going into this race, having placed 5th (out of 7) at pre-region at the end of August, and they had lost to Weber repeatedly throughout the year (quite badly, a few times). However, something seemed to click in the week leading up to the district meet last week, and these girls put it together and ran an outstanding team race. It changed the projections of us being 5th to now being 2nd to Weber. For the next 5 days I scoured numbers and results to see how we might match up with Weber with our new level. We hadn't raced them in 3 weeks, and we were looking like a different team, so after mixing and matching results from various meets we came up with a plan of how we could put ourselves in position to win. Here's a small picture at what that looked like:
We also had what I considered to be two aces in the hole with Tai and Alexis. Tai had missed some time with illness and Alexis missed some of the early races with injury, so the two had never raced a full varsity race together.
The girls knew how they needed to execute to get the win, but it was easier said than done. The first step was to follow the mantra, "Don't be a hero" in the first mile (meaning don't go out so fast that you fall apart later), knowing that our top opponent, Weber, in addition to pretty much every other team, might do just that. From there we needed to move up the field, and our runners 4-7 (Alexis, Ayla, Tai, and Brooklyn) needed to split up Weber's 3-5.
The first mile went about as expected, with Skye, Ella, and Taylor placing themselves right where they needed to be, and they maintained that to the finish. However, there was a huge time difference (about 25 seconds) between Weber's 3-5 and our 4-7, so there was a lot of ground to make up. The girls showed no panic, even if my confidence waned a bit with how big of a gap 25s is.
At about the mile mark and the halfway point they began to make their move to start reeling them back in. Because we had 4 girls running together, weaving around kids like a well oiled machine, every person they passed we added 4 points to their score, and took 2 from ours (only 2 because the 6th and 7th runners doesn't count to the team total). Running like a single unit, they moved up the field steadily, and with 1 mile to go they now trailed the girls they needed to split up by 10 seconds. Which on one hand is much closer, but it is still a significant amount of time.
In the next 1k they had successfully passed everyone they needed to in order to secure the win, and from there it was just about holding on. What's interesting is they worked so well together that we got all 5 runners in front of Weber's 3rd runner, when we really only needed 3, and we had 7 before they had 4, which was a convincing win. Here's an image of how the layout of the race changed over the duration of the race.
Weber has a very strong team, and they were without their top runner. In every other meet that we faced them they would have beaten us easily without their top runner. If we pulled out our top runner, Skye on Tuesday, we still would have won, which only shows the strength of our team (which means the gap between our 1-6 is smaller than the gap of their 1-6, which is of extreme importance).
The boys race wasn't quite as dramatic. They were the favorites by some margin so it had a very different feel to it. It was their race to lose, and the only way to blow it would have been by going out like a hero in the first mile. These kids are wise, experienced, and well trained.
If the race would have ended after one mile they would have lost by about 20 points. For us, though, it's like the race was just beginning. Spencer took control of the race in the final half mile and won in convincing fashion. The rest of the boys went on the hunt after the first mile, which they only trailed by a few seconds, but it was a very controlled few seconds. After 2 miles they were in a winning position, but far from being satisfied, they continued to move up and won the race by a pretty wide 20 points - keeping their unbeaten streak in region alive.
The boys are now ranked 24th in the nation, and 4th in the state. I have some questions about the 4th, but we will answer all those in due time...
