2021 XC State Finals

Our students performed great at the State Finals.  Once again Taava Johnson (Sr) showed that we were in for a great day by running the best race of her career to finish 108^th in 20:29.  She went through the mile in 6:30 at 105^th.  She fell to 115^th at the 2 mile mark, but fought her way back up to 111^th at the 3 mile.  She then turned in a strong finish over the last .1 to move up to 108^th.  She had a great end to her season getting better each meet down the homestretch. 

The boys entered today’s race ranked 17^th and would be running without our #2 runner Brennan Schuler (Sr).  It was time for our pack to step up.  We had nothing to lose and I asked the young athletes to go out much faster than they were accustomed to.  They bought in and did the work that helped propel us to an 11^th place finish with 343 points.  Many of our young athletes struggled a little in the 2^nd mile after their fast start but almost all of them regained their composure and moved up well in the last mile.  Johnny Christensen (So), Sean Pettis (So), and Henrik Quist (Jr) all had breakout races recording Pr’s in the biggest race of their young careers.  Johnny and Sean really moved up well over the last mile.  They each caught around 20 people in that stretch.  Senior Gavin Schuler ran a solid race for his farewell meet, holding steady in the mid 80s the whole way to run a season best of 16:58.  Conor Somers (Sr) topped of the day running his Pr of 15:28 to place 2^nd.  He came a long way from the first week of the season where he was only running about 5 minutes every other day.

I am really proud of this group of athletes and how they improved over the course of the season.  I am also proud of how the boys stepped up despite some last minute adversity to finish much better than their State ranking.

Full results can be found here - https://www.athletic.net/CrossCountry/meet/193479/results

Coach