Welcome to the 2023 South Forsyth cross country season.  Once again, my goal is to provide recaps of each race, previews of upcoming races and highlight our hardworking runners, with a light-hearted view from the sidelines.  This will be my 7th year bringing you the newsletter and with next spring bringing graduation for my final SFHS runner, I am looking for a volunteer to take this over next year. Good news - no experience necessary - any warm-bodied mom or dad will do!  And before you say “I can’t do it, I don’t know anything about cross country” be warned that I never ran high school cross country so the most important thing is being a fan.  Please reach out if you are interested, or even mildly curious, and I’ll be happy to twist your arm, or, I mean, share more information.

Before we get to the running, I want to cover one more important topic.  South Forsyth XC is blessed to have a fantastic booster club that works year-round to help make sure each cross country season is a success off the course.  It starts with the wonderful website they have set up for all to use. https://sfhsxc.membershiptoolkit.com/Home  As the countless e-mails you’ve received all summer have said - bookmark this site!  It has great information from general info about cross country to our season schedule to all the sign-ups available to keep things running.  This weekend marks the first sign-ups for two key activities.  First up is our first pasta dinner, this Friday, 8/18, immediately after practice at South.  There will be 4 of these throughout the season, all on Friday nights and all made possible by the volunteers who sign up to provide pastas, bread, salad, fruit and drinks for the hungry runners. And if you look at the long list of needed items and think it sounds like a lot of food, then you haven’t seen the damage these runners can do in a pre-race dinner.

The other sign-up is for meet snacks.  Parents provided a variety of snacks and drinks for the runners at each meet.  For most meets, at a minimum you’ve got guys and girls varsity races and JV races. Some meets even add a 3rd set of races (open), so between arriving an hour before the first meet and waiting till all races/awards are complete, the bulk of Saturday morning is gone and we want everyone to be able to stay fueled either before or after their races.  It is a lot of sign-ups across the season, but with over sixty runners on the roster, if everyone takes just a few, it will lighten the load for all. Thanks in advance for your support! 

Now on to the fun stuff.

While the runners have been training all summer, the annual time trial really kicks off the start of the season.  In the scheme of things, especially this being the only 2-mile race they’ll run all season, the times are pretty meaningless, unless you want to compare how you are starting the year off compared to last year.  But it does give the coaches a starting point for a top 7 or top 10, which is the breaking point for varsity vs. JV in the meets.  But if you found yourself outside one of those two groups, don’t be discouraged. The positions will shift from week to week depending on performance in the meets (which jump up to 5k in distance), health/injuries and even things like SAT/ACT dates, which always seem to fall on a meet Saturday in the fall.

Props to the parents for a great turnout at time trial.  While Winderemere Park is by far the closest meet this season, I hope the attendance is a good indication of the following we’ll get at many races.

Girls

The girls started things off and senior Izzy Yonas took off from the start and led the ladies wire to wire to take the top spot.  Next up was fellow senior Molly Hanlon, who looked solid on her way to a 2nd place finish.  Sophomore Paige Harden didn’t push the pace too hard as she returns from injury, but it was nice to see her up there in 3rd. In 4th was sophomore Danielle Schmuckal, who looks to continue to make strides coming off a promising freshman campaign.  Taking the 5th spot was Pratima Yelliya.  Pratima was a new runner last year who dropped nearly 4 minutes off her time from the beginning of last season to the end, so it looks like she is ready take that next step. Sophomore Susan Price landed in 6th.This is her first season on the War Eagle cross country team, so we look forward to see how she builds on this impressive start. Right on her heels was a pair of seniors, Ava Wright and Landon Laymon.  Ava has been steadily moving up the rankings throughout her career, so it is nice to see her battling for a top 7 spot.  And it is good to see Landon back looking healthy after losing last season to injury.  Rounding out the top 10 for the ladies was junior Ashley Wison and senior Katie Wilusz.

Boys

It was senior Adam Zorko and junior Ben Winn who set the pace for the guys off the line, with the two of them running side by side the entire time and crossing together with a friendly handshake down the finishing chute.  Behind them, for most of the two miles, it appeared juniors Thomas Lichtenwalner and Wyatt Longstreth were going to follow Adam & Ben’s plan, but they apparently didn’t have buy-in from the guys behind them, so you wound up with a bit of a sprint off coming off the last corner.  It was sophomore Camden Coker who sneaked by to grab the 3rd spot, with junior Rishi Nagappan right behind in 4th.  Thomas took the 5th spot, with Wyatt in 6th, with sophomore Aariv Gupta closing fast to grab 7th.  South had their first freshman at the 8th spot with Collin Hardy and then showed just how deep the guys team is with another 4 runners battling for 9th and 10th, with junior Grant Longstreth and senior Kellen Cain just edging out seniors Josh Wilson and Ben Dubrow.  I think you could see any of these guys take a run at the top 7 as the season goes on.

This Saturday, 8/19, we kick things off for real as South travels to Roper Park in Jasper, GA for the Pickens Preview. I hope you make the 30-ish mile trek up for this first meet. This one has proven popular in recent years as the numbers continue to grow, with over 30 teams signed up to compete.  With this meet, the runners get an early try at what should also be the course they run for region championships at the end of the season. This is also a very spectator-friendly course, although it does appear they have altered the course slightly, so you might want to take a peek at the course map. https://assets.sp.milesplit.com/meets/516398/files/pickenspreview-coursemap.pdf

The runners still do two full laps, although as they come around toward the end of each lap, they go wide to follow the start path again, then on the final lap, you cut over mid-lap and make the the loop down to the finish chute. From a spectator standpoint, you still get the nice elevated view of the start and finish and can see them twice per loop, but will have to decide if you just watch from the top of the hill or make the now longer walk to get up close on each pass.

The Guys

The meet will start off with the top 10 guys running in the varsity race.  For these early races, it is tough to handicap, since even if a team is entered, they may choose not to race their varsity, so you don’t really know until you show up.  Lambert, West Forsyth, Pace Academy, Harrison would all be strong challengers for South depending on who runs.  It did take a sub-16 minute effort to win here last year, so I do expect some good competition.  Ben Winn finished top 10 last year, so look for him to challenge the leaders.  

It is an exciting transition year for the South guys.  They did graduate two from their top 5 (congrats to Ben Bergey & Harris Garmon), but have a strong group of upperclassmen that should continue to progress as well as some exciting younger runners who look ready to make a contribution.  If they stay healthy and push each other, they have an opportunity to make some noise. There is, however, the 7A, region 6 dilemma.  South has the fortune, or misfortune, depending on how you look at it, of sitting in the most competitive region in the state.  If you read MileSplit’s preview of 7A Boys, they call out 5 schools from region 6 (Lambert, West, Denmark, Milton & South) that could all have a shot at landing a podium spot (top 4 team finish) at state this year.  Wow, that’s fantastic, right?  The trouble is only 4 schools from each region qualify for state, so there is a chance that one of the top teams in the state is not even going to make it to the state meet.  So South needs to keep improving and make sure they take care of business as the season wears on.

The Girls

Like the guys, on paper this has some fantastic teams registered, with both teams that beat South at state last year (Marietta & Harrison), along with strong teams from other divisions (Pace, Creekview) and some expected challengers in 7A (West, North Gwinnett). Izzy was top 5 last year so look for her among the leaders again.

South performed well here last year, taking third behind Marietta and Harrison, placing 5 in the top 25. But this is a new look team, having lost top runner Carmel Yonas, consistent scorer Caroline Turner, as well as Janisha Patel & Pragna Veravelli, who both spent time in our top 7 last year.  Izzy will be among the best in 7A and Paige and Molly should push each other for a strong 2-3 punch, but seeing the progress of the 4-10 runners may be the story of the season.

I can’t wait to get it started.  I’ll see you all at Roper Park on Saturday!