Lyons Township High School Invitational

 
    Four new runners joined us today for the first time.  Hopefully they were not scared off by the size of this particular meet.  It was HUGE!  (In comparison to our "typical" meets in the past, at least.)  Most of our meets will not have this many people nor last as long.  It was a little intimidating to be among so many good runners; we were a little out of our league.  But it was a positive experience and everyone gave forth a good effort.

  Please don't shoot the photographer, but I thought my battery was fully charged when I left the house this morning.  However, it died during the race.  So there is not equal representation in the pictures.  So sorry.  But it is now fully charged and ready for Tuesday's meet. (If anyone else had a camera and took pictures, feel free to send them my way.)

Getting ready to run the course during warm-up time.

Thanks to the Boosters, we have a new tent!  Now let's see if we can actually get it up.

Almost done...

Beautiful!!!!  We finally look official!

Getting instructions from the coach.

 

A final word of prayer before the first race.

Nice socks!

The schedule was as follows:

         8:00    JV Girls

         8:30    JV Boys (Peter, Benji, Anders, Rohan & Kenny)

         9:00    Varsity Girls (Ale, Nessa & Tamron)

         9:30    Varsity Boys (Eric, Jaylin, Jose R., Jacob, Mario, Steven & James)

         10:00  Frosh Girls (Chloe)

         10:30  Frosh Boys (Emmett, Jack, Joey, Jose P. & Zach)

         11:00  Soph Girls (Michaela & Kelli)

         11:00  Soph Boys

JV BOYS

Anders was especially light on his feet today.

 

Final instructions

They're off!

Benji finished in 22:36.72.  This is significantly faster than his previous race.  Way to go, Benji!

Anders' time was 23:46.89.  This is also a lot quicker than last weekend.  Great job!

Peter (24:24.51), Kenny (24:41.90) and Rohan (24:42.36) pushed each other on.  This was Peter's first race.  Kenny took off a few minutes from last week's course, and Rohan cut off several minutes from his time.  Super job, boys!!!


(In case you're wondering, I know this week's race was a 4800 m event and last week's was a 5000 m one, but if you take 96% off of last week's time, that gives you a number to compare to.  That's how I'm determining if there is an actual improvement.)

VARSITY GIRLS

The right socks are important!

Warming up

Off they go!

Final time 22:22.02

Nessa cut off over 30 seconds from her best time last year.  Today's time was 23:50.43.  Super!

Tamron put forth a good effort, but for some reason was not listed on the results sheet obtained from the school website.  Keep up the good work, Tamron!

 BOYS VARSITY

Final warm-ups...

...and prayer.

The race has begun.

Finishing in 17:22.39, Eric cut off 2 minutes from his best time last year!

Clocking in at 19:31.80, Jacob also cut off time from last week.

Jose R finished in 20:13.96.

Mario's time was 20:25.82, 15 seconds better than his best time last year.

Done in 20:38.09, James also finished better than last week.

Steven ended it in 21:43.04, significantly faster than any other race!

FROSH GIRLS 

(Lucky for them, Frosh boys and girls only had to run 2 miles)

Note: Girls & Boys warmed up together.  I am not calling the boys 'girls'!

Only 1 Walther representative for this race.

This was Chloe's first two mile race.  She finished in 16:59.82.

Frosh Boys

 Sorry, no pictures of sweaty boys this time around.  

This is where the camera's battery died!!!!

But here are their times:

Zach-18:17.44 (First race ever!!!)
Joey-17:40.42 (This was a faster pace than for the 5K.  Fantastic!)
Jack-13:12.00 (Also a better pace than last week.  Wonderful!)
Emmett-14:09.44 (Another improvement.  Super!)
Jose P-17:31.15 (A strong improvement.  Marvelous!)

Soph Girls

Kelli & Michaela

  (This had to be taken by a camera phone and e-mailed to me.  Don't know why, but I can't adjust the size of the photo.  Sorry, girls.  I'm not trying to diminish the amount of your importance!!!)

Hey, did everyone get a Lyons Township XC T-shirt????

By the way, thanks to the Neubiesers and the Urbans for the great pasta dinner last night.  

The next meet is this Tuesday @ Niles West High School at 4:15 p.m.

See you there!