 |
| Training logs beginning in May, 2017. |
Coaching cross country and track has been the biggest joy of
my life. I’ve spent most of the last four years around Fairmont Senior distance
runners. This crowd has always made me feel comfortable and very few crowds of
people make me feel comfortable, none more so than this group. The program has
come such a long way in the last three years which I’m not crediting to myself but
being involved in any capacity has been a lot of fun. I’ll attempt to provide a
timeline although everything seems to run together in my memory. 2016 was a
pretty brutal fall for us as we were not good at all. It was frustrating at the
time but brings me laughter to look back at the training logs. All those days
off. It took time to develop a culture. Eventually it wasn’t like pulling teeth
to get them to log mileage. That first year we did have an excellent senior,
Gage, who really was instrumental in re-establishing a competitive culture. I
remember my first track season in 2016. My high school friend and track
teammate for four years, Zach, had been coaching our old high school track team
and told me about an assistant job opening up. I decided to try it out and on
the first day he introduced me to the distance crew, who as I recall, on the
first day consisted of two 22+ min 5k goons that I couldn’t tell apart (Miguel
and Bryce) and Gage. I knew of Gage from when I was living in Morgantown. He
had run a halfway decent mile in 8th grade at the shell building
which made me think he could be good. I remember sitting against the fence at
east-west stadium, within 10 yards of where I snapped my femur eight years
earlier, as practice dwindled down. I wasn’t sold on the gig yet. I had yet to
develop any solid relationships. I was 190 lbs., 50 pounds heavier than I was
in the last entry on here. Then Gage sat down with me and said something along
the lines of- I know I’m not fit enough to go to state this spring, but I’d
like to have a big senior season, can you help? Now I’ve heard the whole- I
want to be good- dozens of times from old teammates to current kids but I could
see it meant a lot to him. So, we sat there for about an hour after practice
drawing out the spine to a good summer training. It was a blast and just like
that- I had a relationship built. I had something positive to think about. We
started summer training immediately and we were still in March. A small group
started to grow around Gage. Miguel and Bryce began logging mileage, granted
they’d come back some runs covered in locusts or with a crow or chicken, but
they were running mileage and starting to understand the process. They were
improving too, but as they’d be quick to tell you- didn’t take much to improve
their times. Another important piece to that 2016 puzzle was a middle-distance
kid, Elijah, who seemed to come out of nowhere in May improving his 800 from
2:12 to 2:05 and then sneaking into all-state with a 2:02. He wanted to improve
upon that success and made the decision to join the ragtag cross country team
for my inaugural season. There was a workhorse of a freshman that spring, too.
Tavian quickly found himself running four events a meet including several
3200-1600-800 triples which I would never assign but he liked it and wouldn’t
like being ‘rested’. Couldn’t get him out for cross that fall, but he would
remain a big piece to the program. So, leaving Laidley Field in 2016 our cross
team had four pieces: Gage, Miguel, Bryce, Elijah.
That group added two incoming freshmen, Alex and Zak, and
both of them immediately factored in. The summer of 2016 also saw a sophomore, Caleb,
come out and impress but as he will admit- he was a bonehead the previous
spring and was academically ineligible. Anyone who has followed the program
recently knows that he returns to be an important piece. My first race as a
coach was where we always opened our season, St. Marys. I had made the trip
enough times to where I thought I knew how long it would take to get there, but
fast forward to race day and we were the last team to arrive and the boys
practically had to warm up upon arrival. I knew we weren’t in great shape, but
everyone seemed to be in their personal best shape yet. Aside from Gage leading
the way, I had no clue as to what the order would be behind him. Our 2-6 seemed
to shuffle workout by workout. And sure enough our first three meets reflected
that as we took our first three beatdowns of the season.
St. Marys
|
Bridgeport
|
Mineral Wells
|
Gage 18:25
|
Gage
19:03
|
Gage
17:25
|
Miguel 19:30
|
Elijah
20:35
|
Zak
18:51
|
Elijah 20:04
|
Bryce
20:41
|
Alex
19:17
|
Bryce 20:12
|
Miguel
20:42
|
Elijah
19:36
|
Alex 20:39
|
Zak
21:13
|
Miguel
19:47
|
Zak 20:52
|
Alex
21:24
|
Bryce
19:59
|
7th
|
8th
|
11th
|
We then entered a stretch of injuries. Miguel and Bryce were
sidelined for Doddridge Invitational, we took 5th. We were without
Elijah in Preston when we took 3rd of 4 teams and were without both
Elijah and Miguel at Grafton’s Bearcat Invitational as we took 10th.
Grafton was an important race because that was our regional site and we had our
ambitions set on going to state, because that is about the lowest goal I can
imagine pursuing. At that point in the season I was extremely pessimistic about
sending anyone besides Gage to Cabell. Nonetheless, we pressed on. I’d say
six-eight of our final long runs were done in Grafton. We did multiple workouts
in Grafton and made that course our home course, granted any course we spend
more than one Saturday a year on has more of a home course advantage than our
designated home course. We had the full cast back for our final regular season
meets at East Fairmont and our home meet, but we continued to struggle.
Although Gage and Zak, who had emerged as our #2 runner, a spot he held in six
straight races, raced poorly at Big Ten conference championship; The team ran
their best all-around meet and we took 5th. Everyone was healthy and
beginning to feel a lot stronger as we had pulled back in the mileage
department. Conference was the first meet where everyone didn’t look trashed at
the start line. There was a lot more life flowing through the team and we
headed into regional at Grafton with as much confidence as we could have.
The team was pretty educated on the competition. The
practice after meets we would go over results as well as results from other
races and try to get to know who we were going up against. We knew Berkeley
Springs, East Fairmont, and St. Mary’s were locks for the state meet. That left
one spot to fight for against Philip Barbour, who we were 2-4 against on the
season but we did just edge them out at conference by 3 points, and Ritchie
County who we were 0-4 against and most recently race them at the regional
site, where they beat us by 77 points. One
time. That was our mindset. Regional was the only race I put any emphasis
on. Everything else was practice. Gage led that way with a 17:15 PB to finish 2nd.
That PB train rolled through our entire lineup (Granted Grafton is a fast
course, but we also had already raced there once that year). Everyone set new
personal bests as Zak went 18:14, Miguel 18:45, Alex 19:04, and a very banged
up Bryce toughed it out with a 19:23. I’d like to say that I knew the results
leading up to the presentation, but I didn’t. I knew Gage came in almost 20
spots ahead of Ritchie’s top finisher and Zak edged our their #2, but we lost
the 3 4 5 matchup. It played out 139-147 in our favor and this first season was
ending in Cabell. I was stoked to be going to state as I saw it realistically
taking two seasons to get back to that stage. The boys ran well in Cabell to
take 8th, beating two more schools that we had yet to beat, but the
only accolade that was within reach was all-state for Gage. He wasn’t ranked in
the top 10, which was a fair assessment of his regular season, but he
obliterated the race with a 16:39 to take 5th place. We, Gage and I,
had put a lot of work in. We traveled to other meets, LKC for example, to study
the competition as he was very keen on the same aspects of racing as I am.
Anything to get more confidence and understand who he was going up against. We
figured best case scenario he could slide into 7th or 8th,
on average probably factor in around 12th and on a bad day slide
back into the 20s. Finishing 5th was the perfect race by him and I
believe to this day is the performance I’m most proud of at Cabell, including
my own races. That wraps up season one.
 |
| 2016 squad after clinching a spot to state. |
2017 track season saw no all-state honors on the guys side,
a 2nd consecutive 7th place finish for the 4x8. On the
girls side the 4x8 did take 5th and Maya took runner up in the 800
with a 2:20; Not too shabby for her first season over 400m. Down the road I
will go into detail about her and her journey (it’s a great story) but I’m
going to try and focus on the boys’ distance dept in this entry. After our
practices, the local middle school teams take over east-west stadium. I volunteered
as asst coach for West Fairmont Middle which was mostly an underwhelming
experience, but in order to take the next step as a distance program; We needed
more pieces. Rather than wait until June, going this route allowed the incoming
freshmen to begin being groomed for high school. There was one 8th
grader, Tyler, who had run solid 1600 times, sub 5:15 and wanted to make a run
at a sub 5 mile. We got close that spring, 5:04, but due to the meet selection
there was never anyone remotely close to him that could push him to sub 5. That
was a shame as there was an excellent class of middle schoolers competing
nearby (Seven boys went 5:00 or under at Harry Green, some 15 miles south of
us.) That field would have been perfect for him to finally slip sub 5, but we
moved passed it as at the end of the day very few people care what you ran in 8th
grade. There was no doubt that Tyler would make a solid miler, but first I
needed him to be good over 5k. He was joined with Logan and Elijah (new Elijah)
to make 3 of our 7 runners freshmen. Heading into June we had Senior Miguel,
Junior Caleb, Sophomores Zak and Alex, and our 3 Frosh. Making state was no
longer a goal as we looked to get as close to the podium (top 2) as we could.
Regardless of everyone’s fitness and the competition, we train to win. (Despite
having 0 wins.)
Our campaign opened in St Marys once again, arriving at a
reasonable hour, and we took home 3rd place. We were 8 points from
winning and had the fastest team total. Things were looking up, especially if
you were to compare that outing to the ’16 Autumn Classic:
2017
(3rd Total Time 1:35:14)
|
|
Gage 18:25
|
Caleb 17:30
|
Miguel 19:30
|
Miguel 18:22
|
Elijah 20:04
|
Alex 18:55
|
Bryce 20:12
|
Tyler 20:07
|
Alex 20:39
|
Zak 20:20
|
Our front end, 1-3 finishers, had vastly improved. Miguel
and Alex had been lighting up their summer training and the addition of Caleb and
Tyler pushed everyone to be better. Miguel had taken a strong leadership role
and led everyone, by a significant margin, in mileage. As much as I’d like to
load the guys up with proper mileage, it takes time to build from never training
before high school. Miguel was over two years into it with me and was able to hit
the mileage that helped him drop four minutes off his 5k in two years. Caleb became
our front runner almost from day one. Miguel had beaten him in July and often
in workouts, but Caleb was a gamer and would go on to be our top runner for all
of the ’17 campaign. I look at that top three positively now, but in the moment,
I left St. Marys preaching that our 4-5 was not good enough. Which it wasn’t. But
it was also August. We traveled to Bridgeport’s Invite next, which turned out
to be a duel meet between us and, now full strength Bridgeport, and they
thumped us pretty good. Unlike 2016, there was no movement in the order of our
1-7.
So, through two races we had lost to Bridgeport twice and
Ritchie once. There was no Bridgeport at the Doddridge Invitational and we felt
like Ritchie was a nice stepping stone to getting ahead of Bridgeport. If we can’t beat Ritchie, we definitely can’t
beat Bridgeport. The guys came out flying but being Doddridge, they slowed
down on the hills. Nonetheless, we were out matching Ritchie in all 5 spots. Our
weakness showed as our 4-5 eventually faded behind Ritchie’s but as it turned
out, our 1-3 spotted us enough to edge them out and earned us win #1. It wasn’t
the most prestigious win, but ya gotta start somewhere and it felt good. Races
are won with all 5 runners, but hands down the best performance was Alex as he
remained our #3 but pushed passed every single Ritchie runner. Put 3 in front
of someone’s 1 and it’s hard to blow that. Behind our 1-3 things shook up a bit
as FR Logan came in with a much needed scoring debut, finishing 4th,
Tyler close behind, and Elijah next. With our 4-6 being Freshmen that class was
starting to look up. After Doddridge we made the nearly three hour commute to
our in-region neighbor Berkeley Springs, solely because they hosted regional
that year. It was a viewed as a duel between our actual neighbor school, East
Fairmont, a duel in which they won. But in the process of shooting for them we
put Ritchie away with ease and sort of forgot any other teams were at the race.
Four weeks after getting stomped at their home course, we
faced off against Bridgeport at Grafton’s invitational. It was our first time
back since clinching state qualification the fall before. Caleb fell to Bridgeport’s
top runner and Miguel fell to their #2 which put us in a hole that we hadn’t
been able to combat so far that season. Tyler edged Alex out for the #3 spot, marking
his best race yet and also both entering before Bridgeport’s #3. Zak returned
to the top 5 and beat Bridgeport’s #5 by 1 second and just like that win #2 and
our first one over Bridgeport, a school who was irrelevant when I competed but
since then has established a very quality program and pretty much ran the show
since dropping to AA. We lost by four points to East at their home meet, and by
much more than four to Preston, but I left optimistic because we had ripped a
hard workout the day before that race and I thought the race would go much
worse than that. I talk a lot, and in doing so I put my foot in my mouth from
time-to-time. The next month or so I choked on my foot because in my mind, and
in my words, we only had to focus on East Fairmont. Nooooooo one else would be
a problem. Next meet was our home meet where East dominated, and Philip Barbour
beat us soundly, a team we were 4-0 against that season. We did edge Bridgeport
by 1 point, but I could not have cared less at that point. Fast forward to
conference and we were embarrassed by all three schools and of course Preston cruised
by all the AA schools. 5th place at conference was borderline
hilarious considering we finished in the same spot the year before with a far
inferior squad. Now we are heading back to Berkeley, a course that caught a lot
of flak for its design but to be honest I can count the courses I like running on
one hand, to compete for one of 4 qualifying spots against- East who we had yet
to beat, Philip Barbour who whooped us twice in a row, we hadn’t lost to Ritchie
in awhile but the way we were racing I was thinking we may fall to the 4th
spot again. Our top runner had a leg wrapped in placebo tape, but behind him
the troops were feeling good. Just like the previous October as we began to
ease back everyone felt revitalized and region turned out to be smoother
sailing, but we still took 3rd. Started the season off 4-0 against
Philip Barbour and now we were driving to Cabell 4-3 against them. Only have to worry about East. I ate
those words for every meal for the month or so between our home meet and state.
I believe if the state meet was run 10 times, we would have
been top 4 every single time, but we had proven capable of beating and losing
to both Philip Barbour and Bridgeport. I knew there was a moderate chance we
could put it together and take second, and of course we were rallying in the bitter
weather under the One Time mindset. I
think there was four teams having title talks that day, if not then I don’t know
what they were doing. Cabell is what it is all about. We don’t run every morning
in the summer and all winter long for any race besides Cabell in October. I
knew Caleb had a slim chance at all-state, I would have said a fat chance, but
he was limping into state. He and Miguel ran good enough to give us a fighting
chance. Caleb lost some spots to Philip Barbour’s top runner and everyone aside
from the state champ lost spots to our neighbor’s top runner, who lit the
course up that day. Miguel was the best #2 in the state aside from Winfield’s
1-2 punch and St. Marys two all-state boys there without a team. Coming off the
hill at 2 miles we were matched up perfectly 3-5 against East Fairmont and I
couldn’t believe it. This was the best our depth guys had looked all year and
they really went after it. East wasn’t rattled by our presence though and all
three of their back end guys outdid ours, capped off with several points made
up on the final 300ish meter stretch on track. Nothing is more gut wrenching
than losing points on that track. So, East won. It wasn’t heartbreaking as we
were 0-fer against them, but we made it interesting. Interesting enough to
where we got to take to the podium as state runner-up. In 2016 as we watched
Gage get his all-state awards, I told everyone that we would be up there next
year as a team. In 2017 I said we’d be back on the podium as the top team and I
left really fired up. After the awards all seven guys huddled around and I
could hear murmurs of them game planning for the next 12 months. We were losing
a key piece and there wasn’t anyone standing out in the middle school ranks, so
if we wanted to improve it would have to come from within that huddle. That was
the mindset at least. Oh, here is another little table comparing our state
meets. Keep in mind 2017 was cold and rainy whereas 2016 may have been the best
racing conditions since… I don’t know 2010 was pretty nice out.
’17 104
pts 17:45 avg (2nd)
|
|
5. Gage 16:39
|
12. Caleb 17:17
|
33. Zak
17:43
|
15. Miguel 17:26
|
66. Alex
18:26
|
32. Alex 17:50
|
74. Elijah
18:36
|
34. Tyler 17:51
|
80.
Miguel 18:46
|
45. Zak 18:18
|
84. Bryce
18:52
|
76. Logan 18:58
|
114.
Mason 20:37
|
80. Elijah 19:10
|
 |
| This picture is already captioned |
That’s a wrap on year 2. If you are still reading- hats off
to ya. But we have one more year left to cover. Winter is the least exciting of
the four seasons, but the most important one in my eyes. Every joe shmoe runs
March-May, August-Oct, and usually the two months in between. The most common
time people take off is Nov-Feb. If they rest and we grind- pretty easy to make
up ground on the competition. The 16-17 winter saw pretty much just Gage
running. Several were out logging miles in the ’17-’18 winter. The one to log
the most mileage from Nov-Feb was a surprise. Logan, our #6 at state, proved to
be serious when he said he wanted to be better and contribute to the 2018
campaign. No one was lighting the world on fire that winter, but they were hitting
personal mileage highs. In January four of them (Miguel, Caleb, Alex, Logan) all
bundled up and participated in the Run 2 Read half marathon here in town. Having
run that race multiple times I feel comfortable gauging one’s fitness off that
run. Considering miles 5-13 were caked with snow and ice, everyone ran well. The
fact that they were running it meant more than the actual results. It showed
commitment to the winter game. As I said, this entry is to focus on cross
country, but the track saw improvement and I’ll go into further depth in a
later entry. Earned runner up in the 4x800, albeit a much slower field than
previous years, Tyler went on to break 5 minutes and get all-state with a 4:37
1600 to close his freshman campaign, Caleb earned all-state honor in the 3200
and Zak and Logan joined him in the 3200 field, and Tavian hung on for the last
all-state spot in the 800. Maya also added a runner-up honor in the 3200, but
that’s for another time. There were two very important events that spring, as
far as cross country goes. Mid-March I hear of this Ashby fella who is tagging
along on the guys’ normal runs and seems interested in distance and cross country.
He only had the chance to race the 1600 twice, both in the same week, and
posted 5:20s and then 5:05. He seemed like a natural though and I really wanted
to get him out for cross country. The other significant event was Tavian
deciding to run cross country as a senior. Like I said earlier, he had always
been a consistent contributor to the distance events in the spring time, but never
came out for cross country. Leaving Laidley in 2018 we had a lot more pieces
than ever before, granted several were far from polished: SR Caleb, SR Tavian,
SR Jeremiah (member of the 4x8 with Tav), JR Zak, JR Alex, JR Ashby, SO Tyler,
SO Logan, SO Elijah. In June we would add a FR from St. Francis, Jasper, who
quite literally hit it off with the team the moment he stepped out of his car,
and another FR in the form of Caleb’s younger brother. So, from 2017 to 2018 we
lost 1 and gained 5 (2 FR 2 SR 1 JR).
Being the most recent summer, I can now say- this summer-
and this summer was a stupid amount of fun. Every workout was fireworks by
someone, and of course was a dud by someone else. That’s how it goes. Everyone had
their gps watches and were completely hooked on the fun of training. We were
now three years into the program so the leaderboards for a lot of our staple
workouts were getting more prestigious and everyone knew both their best and
the overall best for each workouts. They were laying waste to every single
workout. Which in my mind meant they were going to torch their previous times
at meets, too. Heading into Autumn Classic we wanted to win and didn’t even see
that as an overly ambition goal. We were so close the previous year and we were
much fitter this time around. Caleb had yet to lose a workout and on the few
that he missed either Tyler or Tavian would ‘win’ the workout. But honestly
everyone was running so well and had shown glimpses of personal greatness that
I wasn’t sure what the order would be, but I knew it’d be faster than ever
before.
Autumn Classic Table
2017
(3rd Total Time 1:35:14)
|
2018
(1st Total Time 1:31:02)
|
|
Gage 18:25
|
Caleb 17:30
|
Caleb 17:10
|
Miguel 19:30
|
Miguel 18:22
|
Ashby 18:08
|
Elijah 20:04
|
Alex 18:55
|
Tavian 18:10
|
Bryce 20:12
|
Tyler 20:07
|
Alex 18:45
|
Alex 20:39
|
Zak 20:20
|
Logan 18:49
|
5 in front of ’16 #2 and in front of ’17 #3. We were in fact
much better than before. Caleb took the overall win, Ashby and Tavian instantly
proved to be huge additions, Alex improved for a third straight season, and
Logan’s off season rewarded him with scoring points, something he had
only done once or twice in 2017. The vibes were good. Even those who didn’t
race as well as they wanted were happy because we started off the season with a
dominant win over, who at the time, I thought was our main competition. Next stop
was Preston, one of the courses that I would count on one hand that I like, for
my first ever Knight Night Relays experience. It was a lot of fun. We went off
of Autumn Classic order of finish to make up the 2.5 relay teams. Our A team
took 2nd overall to University High School Tavian and Caleb both ran
7:56 (not sure what that is worth) Ashby and Tyler, from the B relay, weren’t
too far behind turning in 8:03 and 8:06. It was a good experience. There wasn’t
any pressure or much hype around it- they just went out and had fun running
hard at night.
Next up on the 5k front was Forest Festival in Elkins, the site of our conference championship. Between Knight Night Relays and Forest Festival we noticed Winfield dropped a good result on the state meet course, showcasing their two newest pieces. They had dominated teams that we were racing in Elkins, so we wanted to dominate, too. Tavian outkicked Caleb as they went 1-2 and this meet served sort of as Tavian hitting the cross country scene. Ashby followed close behind taking 4th and then Logan-Tyler-Alex took the 12th-14th spots as we dropped a 32 point performance against a field that we should have been under 40 pts against. Two races, two wins. Next up on the schedule was a trip to Brooke to likely take a beating by some of my old AAA Region 1 opponents, but due to flooding that got postponed to an inconvenient date. Half the guys were itching to race and the other half weren’t running as 60% of our scorers were missing days due to illness. With Winfield emerging as the other top team, I decided to sign up late for the Bridgeport meet. I remember sleeping none the night before the race. We were coming off the absolute worst week of training, or lack thereof, and Winfield was going to absolutely destroy us. The heat and course design were perfect to fully expose the physical weakness felt by half the team and we marched to our slaughter that day. It’s one thing to get stomped when you are not good, but we weren’t terrible and got rocked so hard that day. In theory, losing to the competition midseason could be a good thing. Grounds everyone if confidence is getting too high, refocuses everyone, and returns us to the undisputed underdog role. This beating did all of those things, but even knowing the positives to come out of it, what a miserable day. We licked our wounds for a night and then were right back to it. Our next race came in Grafton on what feels like our home course and we had plenty of time to regain our health and composure. Grafton provided the perfect test as Morgantown came down. They were a solid team, but a team that Winfield would handle with relative ease. Beating them would sort of signify that we were back on track. We won 40-53 over MHS and our order was beginning to set in cement. Tavian-Caleb-Ashby and then a shuffle 4-6 with Tyler-Logan-Alex. FR Jasper finished 7th that day which now meant we had 3 different #7s through 3 races, Jasper-Zak-Elijah.
Next up on the 5k front was Forest Festival in Elkins, the site of our conference championship. Between Knight Night Relays and Forest Festival we noticed Winfield dropped a good result on the state meet course, showcasing their two newest pieces. They had dominated teams that we were racing in Elkins, so we wanted to dominate, too. Tavian outkicked Caleb as they went 1-2 and this meet served sort of as Tavian hitting the cross country scene. Ashby followed close behind taking 4th and then Logan-Tyler-Alex took the 12th-14th spots as we dropped a 32 point performance against a field that we should have been under 40 pts against. Two races, two wins. Next up on the schedule was a trip to Brooke to likely take a beating by some of my old AAA Region 1 opponents, but due to flooding that got postponed to an inconvenient date. Half the guys were itching to race and the other half weren’t running as 60% of our scorers were missing days due to illness. With Winfield emerging as the other top team, I decided to sign up late for the Bridgeport meet. I remember sleeping none the night before the race. We were coming off the absolute worst week of training, or lack thereof, and Winfield was going to absolutely destroy us. The heat and course design were perfect to fully expose the physical weakness felt by half the team and we marched to our slaughter that day. It’s one thing to get stomped when you are not good, but we weren’t terrible and got rocked so hard that day. In theory, losing to the competition midseason could be a good thing. Grounds everyone if confidence is getting too high, refocuses everyone, and returns us to the undisputed underdog role. This beating did all of those things, but even knowing the positives to come out of it, what a miserable day. We licked our wounds for a night and then were right back to it. Our next race came in Grafton on what feels like our home course and we had plenty of time to regain our health and composure. Grafton provided the perfect test as Morgantown came down. They were a solid team, but a team that Winfield would handle with relative ease. Beating them would sort of signify that we were back on track. We won 40-53 over MHS and our order was beginning to set in cement. Tavian-Caleb-Ashby and then a shuffle 4-6 with Tyler-Logan-Alex. FR Jasper finished 7th that day which now meant we had 3 different #7s through 3 races, Jasper-Zak-Elijah.
Things shook up in the depth department over the next few
weeks as we prepped for championship season. Alex was sidelined with injury and
others struggled at our home meet, that none of us really wanted to run being
so close to conference. Nonetheless Tavian, Caleb, and Ashby turned in another
1-2-4 finish, Logan finished 4th on the team and when others struggled
a bit Jasper stepped up with one of his better races on the year to finish 5th
and mark the 7th guy to score for us on the year. With that race out
of the way we focused in on the task at hand. Winfield had been running well in
North Carolina and laying waste to WV schools, that they should lay waste to.
There was a certain level of tension that came with every win because we would
win and then read about Winfield winning by just as much or more. No one was satisfied
yet. Conference was comical as far as conditions are concerned. Elkins is
already a tough, wooded course, but my god the heavens opened up and poured on
everything. I heard a lot of other people complaining whether it be athletes or
coaches, don’t really register parents complaints pre-race, but as crappy as the whether
was I remembered the 2009 state meet. Similar amount of water and a good bit
colder. The bones and my feet are still chilled from that race. I had prepped
this whole- don’t complain because the state meet could be like this and if it is,
we have to be our best in it- speech to give the guys when the complaints
started rolling but to my surprise, they were all focused. They talked about their
race plans and I didn’t have to curb any complaints. They had a reason to be
focused. Conference is the last chance to run more than 7 guys so the top 7,
barring injury, at conference is who we roll with through the rest of October.
At this I saw 6 guys established as locks (Tav, Caleb, Ashby, Logan, Tyler, and
Jasper). The 7 spot was anyone’s guess. Alex had returned just to try his best
to make varsity. He really wanted to put off the inevitable 8 week break he had
coming, and I couldn’t deny him at least the chance. Along with Alex we had Zak
and Elijah who had all been as high as #6 on the team at one point that year.
This was the first year that I had more than 7 guys so it was a really crappy
feeling to know that 3 guys who had been putting in work and were fit enough to
be varsity on past teams, would be done after that race. As it played out, the
same kid who ran a 2:04 split, 6 seconds better than his previous best, in the
state meet 4x800 showed up at conference like never before and Jeremiah took
home 7th place when it counted.
That meant that after this season 3/7 of our state meet team
would be lost to graduation. Oh, we won conference with relative ease although
both Tavian and Caleb limped away from the race from the falls they took. Caleb
paved the way for the rest of the field, with his face, as he was the first to make
the last turn before wiping out and losing the win. He was of course
frustrated, but at the end of the day no one cares who won conference, individually
or as a team. We had bigger fish to fry. I was happy to see everyone at 100% the
week of region where we wanted to attack on a fast course. At this point we had
run Bridgeport and Elkins twice- all horribly slow courses, not that there’s
anything wrong with that, but these boys wanted some marks that better represented
their fitness. I was thrilled that regional was in St. Marys because now we could
see how far we had come from the first race of the campaign. There were a lot
of tools that could be used to motivate and provide confidence. I’ll go ahead
and show the same three years at St. Marys in August as well as our regional
run/win:
August ‘16
|
August ‘17
|
August ‘18
|
October ‘18
|
Gage 18:25
|
Caleb 17:30
|
Caleb 17:10
|
Tavian 16:46
|
Miguel 19:30
|
Miguel
18:22
|
Ashby
18:08
|
Caleb
17:22
|
Elijah 20:04
|
Alex 18:55
|
Tavian 18:10
|
Ashby 17:26
|
Bryce 20:12
|
Tyler
20:07
|
Alex
18:45
|
Logan
17:41
|
Alex 20:39
|
Zak 20:20
|
Logan 18:49
|
Tyler 17:46
|
We had our 5 set for Cabell. Everyone’s assumption was that
Tavian/Caleb would lead the way, Logan and Tyler would seal the back and Ashby
would be in the middle doing Ashby things. Because that is how the last 4-6 weeks
had played out. We entered as underdogs. We score 34 at region, Winfield scored
29 at their region. Our only head to head with Winfield was 30 point beat down
in their favor. I must have had 12 cups of coffee the night of state and am
thankful that the Red Sox and Dodgers chose that night to extend their game til
4am because I spent the entire night in the lobby, waiting. I hadn’t been sleeping
well and just wanted the state meet to be over. Win or lose just tell me what the
outcome is. The gang was focused the morning of, and I tried my best to stay
out of their way as I didn’t want my nerves to rub off. The hay was in the barn
and there was nothing left to do but run 3 more miles. 3.1 more miles, that
last 200m is pretty important. The first time I saw the field was at the top of
the hill, I don’t know maybe half mile in, and Winfield was out absurdly well.
As I recall they had 4 in front of Caleb. Tavian was mixing it with the first pack
that were to battle for 2nd behind Winfield’s clear individual
winner. Then it was a sea of green tops. Here is what I would see throughout
the race: Winfield 1, Tavian, Winfield 2-4, Our 2-5 and then I would take off
for the next section. My spirit was crushed as Winfield appeared to be a team
on a mission and there would be no shame in losing to them on that day, but good
luck telling a group of teens that. It wasn’t until we were standing at the finish
that I had any hope of winning. Winfield’s top boy took care of business and
won the individual crown. Now to go off of points scored, not places, because
that is what the team title comes down to: Tavian tallied 4 points. Winfield
then scored 5 and 7. Caleb 11. Winfield 13. Logan and Tyler scored 17 and 18.
So through four bodies Winfield was looking at a 26-50 advantage. Ashby scored
20 points to top our scoring off at 70. I hadn’t realized the gap from our 5 to
theirs since I was dippin out once our 5 guy passed. There was a lot of bodies
there and after hands down the most grueling hour or so wait of my life the
results were in and we won 70-71. I was on top of the world and excited to tell
the guys who were beating themselves up over a great improvement:
’16 177 pts 18:02 avg (8th)
|
’17 104 pts 17:45 avg (2nd)
|
’18 70 pts 17:34 avg (1st)
|
5. Gage
16:39
|
12. Caleb
17:17
|
5. Tavian
16:55
|
33. Zak 17:43
|
15. Miguel 17:26
|
14. Caleb 17:27
|
66. Alex 18:26
|
32. Alex
17:50
|
20. Logan
17:45
|
74. Elijah 18:36
|
34. Tyler 17:51
|
21. Tyler 17:45
|
80. Miguel 18:46
|
45. Zak 18:18
|
24. Ashby
17:54
|
84. Bryce 18:52
|
76. Logan 18:58
|
43. Jasper 18:21
|
114. Mason 20:37
|
80. Elijah
19:10
|
80. Jeremiah
19:02
|
 |
| Family Picture |
I’m not sure how long the guys celebrated the victory. I can say that I was finished celebrating before entering Cabell Midland for the awards. With a copy of the results on my phone I scanned through the unlikely win and saw what is to come. Winfield is losing their leader, but only him. Bridgeport ran such a great state meet, 9 points behind us, and they graduate no one from their varsity. We graduate our top 2. I don’t think there are anymore Tavian or Ashbys around. We will enter the 2019 campaign preseason ranked 3rd and if we want to reach the top again, we will have to be much better than a 17:34 average, and we will have to get there without Tavian and Caleb. Someone will have to step up once again, everyone’s responsibilities increase, and there is no time to waste. Being almost February and after an impressive Run 2 Read half marathon, I have decent idea as to who has decided to step up this off-season and who has chosen to hibernate. But we will just have to wait and see how it all plays out.
