First to run were the JV girls and boys. The coaches decided to run them together since there were only 10 girls and 13 boys. Lane had a great first outing placing 2nd in his division and earning a medal. All three of the JV Girls medaled, too. Dani finished 1st with a very fast sprint at the end. Ali finished 9th and Autumn 10th. Lane and Dani received medals with ribbons. They were awarded to the top three of each division. Of the four, only Ali ran this course the previous year. She improved her time by nearly 5 1/2 minutes!
Varsity Girls ran next. Micaela finished 9th of 37 and Katelen placed 16th. Both earned medals. Micaela improved on her time from the previous year for the same course by close to three minutes. Katelen managed to squeak out a personal record (PR) by knocking about 22 seconds off her previous best.
And then there were the Varsity Boys. A team of six pushed themselves to new levels in this race. My thoughts for Christian was to get him under 18 minutes very early in the season and under 17 by midseason. His PR was 18:14 from his last race last season at Districts. His course best at Chillicothe was 20:12 in 2012! He shattered both by improving by about one minute and 20 seconds with a final time of 16:55. What? Yes! So much for what I thought. Time to set new goals! Christian placed 2nd and earned a medal with a ribbon. By the way, he was only about seven seconds behind the first place finisher.
Ben also ran a PR time getting under 20 minutes for the first time in his career. Last year, he placed 2nd in the JV Boys race. This year, he placed 24 of 49 in the Varsity Boys race. He medaled in the top 50%! Following closely on Ben's heals was Bailey at 29th, Brent at 35th, Logan at 38th, and Seth at 43rd. Neither Bailey or Logan ran this meet last year. Bailey missed his PR by a mere 19 seconds. Logan had a great start with an inaugural run time less than 21 minutes. Brent came close to a PR, but did manage to improve over last year's time by 2 1/2 minutes. Seth also improved by about 1:14. As a team, the boys placed 4th out of 6 teams.
The season is underway with another meet in two days at Holden. My expectation level has gone up higher than expected.