Notre Dame Meet Recap

The Notre Dame meet is always a great checkpoint in our season.  With nearly 40 schools, it's typically one of our biggest meets of the season.  It also tends to include a large number of teams we'll see in the postseason.  Often the outcome helps us determine what work remains to be done before districts.

The weather at the meet can be unpredictable.  In the past we've had rain and frosty mornings, but this year we got some of same heat we've had the last few times.  It wasn't unbearable in the early races we ran in, but with practically no shade anywhere on the course, it definitely impacted the finish times.

Boys Race

Our boys were the first to race, with the varsity race featuring over 100 runners.  Among the teams on our district radar were Oak Ridge, Meadow Heights, Bloomfield, and Campbell.  We sat out Caden and Bo who had both raced the last two meets.  Some of these schools also didn't run full squads or split their boys between the varsity and JV races, so the comparisons were incomplete at best.

In the end our boys finished 13th.  However, all things considered that put us within striking distance of all of the teams from our district.  We still have some strides to take to enter into the thick of the dogfight at districts, but we definitely showed we are one of the dogs.

Carter was our first boy across the finish line.  We knew Notre Dame's Aidan Morris would run away with the victory, but Carter would be in the mix of a chase pack that included St. Pius's Jayden Metzler, Woodland's Calvin Layton, and Notre Dame's Jackson Jones, as well as another runner from Kentucky.  As the race went on Metzler pulled away from the rest and Carter fell back a bit, but he made a surge in the final mile to get back into the mix of things.  He was able to move past two of the runners and finished just a second back of Calvin in 4th place.  Carter's finish time was 20 seconds faster than last year.  It was also two seconds faster than his time at Fox, giving him a new season best.  

Collin and Jackson were our next finishers.  They stayed together the entire race.  Coming off of PRs at a tough Perryville course, we expected even more improvement given a faster course and more competition.  They didn't disappoint those expectations but exceeded them.  After a quick first mile, they stayed strong over the ups and downs of the second mile, passing 10 runners along the way.  Then over the third mile they crushed it, running the final mile 10 seconds faster than the first.  That allowed them to get ahead of another 12 runners!  They almost caught another pack of 4 runners in the finish stretch but came up just a bit short. 

In the footrace across the finish line, Collin came across 0.3 seconds ahead of Jackson.  For Collin, this marked an 85-second improvement over the PR he had set less than a week ago at Perryville.  It was also a PR for Jackson by over a minute.  Both of these boys have shaved more than 90 seconds off their 5K time since our home meet.

Noah was our next boy to finish.  This was his first race in exactly a month, with minimal cross country training in between.  Despite the impact this had on his endurance and the fact he was coming off a week with two soccer games, he was still able to hold his position during the race and finish within striking distance of his time at our home meet.  His finish time was also nearly 45 seconds faster than at the meet last year, which is a testament to all the hard work he put in over the summer.

Tristin finished next.  He ran both of the previous meets, but we wanted to give him another race opportunity.  A new PR was a realistic goal, especially with Luke to run with him (more on that later).  Tristin ran the exact the same first mile time that he did at our home meet.  But over the hills of the second mile at Notre Dame, he actually ran his second mile twenty seconds faster than on our course.  That was the significant difference.  With most of the runners at his pace in the JV race, Tristin didn't have many people to run with other than Luke.  But they stayed together until the finish stretch when Tristin fought to a hard-earned PR, a 27-second improvement over the previous one he set at our meet.

Luke was our last finisher, but it's the fact that he finished at all that we're proud of.  The last two months have been a series of one unfortunate event after another for Luke:  some elusive to diagnose health issues, a leg injury, and two weeks ago a bout of Covid, not to mention the mounting frustration of not being able to train or race.  With this being Luke's first 5k of the season coming off limited training, we wanted to play things conservatively.  Having him push Tristin to a PR made for a good alignment of goals, and Luke executed that to perfection.  He's still not fully out of the woods, but we're happy he's on the move again.  The road to rebuilding his fitness will be a long one, but we're excited to see Luke take steps in that direction in the coming weeks!

Girls Race

On the girls side we also didn't quite run our full roster.  Outside of Campbell, we didn't have much team competition for our ladies to match up with.  Instead, we set our sights on simply competing with the schools present, many of them bigger than us.  Our goal was to crack the top 5, and on the back of some solid performances, that's exactly where we finished.  5th place marks the best finish for our girls team ever at the Notre Dame Meet, even in the years when some of our very good teams have raced there.  That makes a very strong statement looking to the rest of the season.  

Anna was our first girl across the finish.  She ran an aggressive first mile but was still able to move up during the rest of the race.  She passed nearly half the girls ahead of her over the final two miles and came just two seconds short of catching another.  That earned her an 8th place medal.  While her time didn't quite match that at Fox, it was still the second fastest of her career and nearly two minutes faster than her time at Notre Dame last year.

Reagan was our next finisher.  Going into the race, we knew that she wasn't going to have much competition in her pace range, especially with the top girls from Jackson racing at another meet.  We decided to turn the race into a testing/training ground by having Reagan try to pace with Notre Dame's Lily Coy.  We knew going in this was a swing for the fences, as Lily's season best was more than a minute faster than Reagan's.  The plan was for Reagan to try to stay with her as long as possible without doing anything that wouldn't be smart.  Reagan was right with Lily at the mile and still within striking distance 2 miles in.  Her time at that point was already 44 seconds faster than at our home meet when she broke our school record.  Temperatures were climbing during the race, and with no postseason implications on the line, Reagan made the decision during the third mile not to push things and shut things down.  She did hop back in behind Anna and ended up finishing 10th.  But more importantly, she showed that she can hang with some of the top girls in the state.

Audrey finished next.  She ran a spicy first mile but continued to move up over the second mile's hills, passing 9 runners.  She continued to push over the final mile, passing five more girls before losing a photo finish to a Pius athlete.  Her time was just 7 seconds off of her finish at Fox, making it the second fastest of her career.  Audrey didn't run at Notre Dame last year, but her time this year was nearly 12 minutes!!! faster than her sophomore season.  

Adeline was our next girl across the finish line.  She's raced side by side with Jocelyn all season, and so we wanted to give her the opportunity to learn some independent pacing by racing alone.  That's an important skill to learn, but it isn't an easy one especially with not many girls at her pace in the varsity race.  She went out a bit conservatively.  It's hard to pick up the pace significantly over what is the most challenging stretch of the course in the second mile.  She was able to find a new gear over the last mile, but it still put her a bit off her time from Monday's meet at Perryville.  Yet she gained a lot of valuable experience that will make her a stronger runner in the future.

Sybina was our next finisher.  Like Adeline, she also ran her first mile slower than at Perryville.  But even with the hills in Notre Dame's second mile, she actually managed to run a faster split than on Monday.  That uptick in pace continued over the final mile, and coming into the homestretch she was side by side with Perryville's Eloise Bollinger.  In a race to the finish, Sybina turned on the jets to finish five seconds faster, marking the 4th girl she passed during the race.  That time was also 6 seconds faster than at Perryville and nearly 2 minutes faster than her time at Notre Dame last year.  

Sybella was our final girl across the finish line.  She stayed with Sybina through the first mile, and while her sister pulled away during the second mile, Sybella matched her pace from Perryville.  The difference was in the final mile, where her finish pace was a full minute faster than on Monday's meet!  That's an insane improvement, and it made the difference, paving the way to a four-minute improvement since the last time she ran the Notre Dame Meet as a sophomore.

All in all we had three new PRs and one other season best.  Those strong performances individually and collectively were exactly what we were looking for from this meet!

You Can Find Full Meet Results Here

You Can Find More Meet Photos Here