It was a great morning for some running races and the athletes lived up to the coach's expectations by continuing to improve individual times. There were impressive results from the Smithville Invitational, but even more impressive results at Marshall. There were 13 athletes participating including all of the boys. The upperclassmen were registered as Varsity and all of the freshmen would run Junior Varsity. Overall, the ES XC squad finished the day with six medals and nine personal records! Let's hope that level of results continues into Lafayette at St. Joseph on Tuesday.
At this meet, Varsity Boys ran first. Having been matched up against Kirksville at an earlier meet, it was no surprise that they would have the top runner again. Gordon has impressive times in the mid 16's. Then Warrensburg had all seven of their Varsity boys finishing in the top 10 pushing Austin down to 10th even with a PR. Austin and Christian were both awarded with medals. Besides Austin, Christian and Jacob had personal record times. In fact, Christian broke the 19 minute barrier for the first time by .1 seconds (18:59.9)! It should be noted that these times are unofficial as of this post. Robert had a respectable finish only nine seconds short of his PR time.
The Varsity Girl, Micaela, ran next. She probably could've done better had it not been for the blisters on her feet. The blisters were caused by excessive miles on her old running shoes. She now has new shoes, but that didn't prevent problems with the blisters which made it uncomfortable to run. She didn't record a PR, but she did have another respectable time despite the situation with her feet. She missed medaling by one position since they only medaled the top 20 girls and she finished 21st.
The JV Boys and Girls ran at the same time. Once again, Warrensburg dominated the field by loading the JV race with as many as they could muster. Of the six boys, five of them had personal record times including Ben, Bailey, Brent, Daulton, and Alex. Seth didn't have a PR, but he finished in the middle of the group at 30th. All three of the "Killer B's" medaled, too. As a team, they finished second behind Warrensburg. More importantly, they finished ahead of Conference opponent, Odessa, who had many more JV Boys running than Excelsior had.
For the girls, Katelen finished 5th and earned a medal. Unfortunately, she fell short of her PR by about 24 seconds. Ali didn't medal, but chopped a full minute off of her PR time. She has come such a long way! For results of this meet, see the Marshall Meet page.
With results like these on a cool day with a flat course, it will be tough to continue the PR trend into Tuesday's meet at Lafayette as hilly as it is. Still, I have confidence in these kids and can't wait to see how they handle the course at Krug Park. Beware, Big Mama!