Cougar Falcon Invitational at South Christian

Mid 60s - Calm

On a great day for racing, the Packers turned in some stellar performances. There were lots of season and personal records. This year the Cougar Falcon meet was moved to the South Christian athletic complex due to construction at the normal site. Just like Gainey Fields, the South Christian athletic complex is a fast course and the kids took advantage of it. Going into the race we talk about trying to really focus on slowly passing after the 2K mark.  We knew if we could be passing in the second half of the race, the fast times would come. 

The girls team placed eighth with 175 points. Linnea Paige lead the way running a season record of 19:17 despite having a bad start. She had to work pretty hard at the 400 m mark to find space and try to get contact with the lead pack.   She got to the tail end of it and then moved up throughout the race. Joelle Patten ran a season record of 22:25 as she moved up nicely in the race also. Elise Pfieffer ran a great race moving up the entire way to record a PR of 22:46. Rachel Maddox also ran a personal record and moved up well running 23:03. Rocquel Richards and Kira Manchip had solid races but got caught in a dead zone where they were isolated and didn’t have others to push them. Olivia Stroven rounded out our varsity squad running a personal record of 26:02.

The boys play second in their division with 84 points.  We knew Sean Pettis would be very competitive in the race. The leaders went out very fast with Sean trailing about 20 m behind. By the mile mark Sean was in contact with the leaders. He looked smooth and relaxed. I saw him again at about a mile and a half mark, and he had fallen off the pace again. He said he had hit a little bit of a bad patch there and was struggling to hold on. He was able to hang on long enough to get through his discomfort and when I saw him again at the 2 1/4 mile mark he was in the lead by about 10 yards. He extended that lead throughout the rest of the race and finished with a fantastic time of 15:24. Carter Sherman ran a huge PR 16:36 placing 10th doing a great job of executing our plan to move up over the last 3 km. Issac Romero just miss breaking 17 minutes but still turned in a big PR despite running a little too aggressively in the middle of the race. He had a very strong finish to place him in the top 20 earning on medal. Blake Taylor continues to get better each race coming back from injury. He ran a PR of 17:25 placing 24th. Cole Lowery just missed his PR but ran a season record of 17:44 as our fifth man. Mossen Green Pr'd running 19:17 with Chase Lowery nursing a sore leg to round out our varsity squad

In the boys JV race, Brandon Rasmussen turned in another PR running 21:09 while John Sampablo Osorrio had a minute PR to record a time of 21:56. 

The results of the day may have been Evan Christoffersen‘s eighth place finish in the freshman race running 18:42 to PR by over a minute. It was one of his best starts of the season and he continued to move up throughout the race.  This is a huge jump for him and should give him a lot of confidence moving forward. Andy Krapp got caught out at the finish and stuck behind a lot of people. He did a great job working hard throughout his race to move up but his start really hurt his time.  In the girls freshman race, Jesse Kendziorski got caught in a dead zone also and was not able to have close competition to help push her. She had a great finish, probably the best I’ve seen her finish this year.

Full results can be found here - https://www.athletic.net/CrossCountry/meet/221559/info

Coach