As it was, South had 19 guys and 7 girls brave enough to toe the line in full sunshine and rising temps Saturday at the North Georgia Championships. And while they ran in two of the earlier races, there was no escaping the heat. I’m almost surprised the runners didn’t choose to storm the prison gates, demanding to get someplace with air conditioning.

The Girls

I give all seven of these girls an incredible amount of credit. These mainly JV runners not only ran the hottest 5k of the day (all the races after them were cut down to 2 miles due to the heat), they also put themselves out there against other team’s varsity squads. And I’ll admit, when it started I wasn’t too sure how it was going to go. As the runners came around the first corner, all seven South girls were packed together among maybe the last 15 runners out of the over 200 that started. I’m a big fan of pack running, but this is not exactly what I had in mind.

But by the end of the first prison loop, Ashley Wilson and Katie Wilusz were side by side and had already picked off over 30 runners. Lilly Jenkins, Mariana Figueroa and Ella Jenkins were together a few spots back and just behind them were new runners Saanvi Rambole and Aanya Kungwani, who were moving up, but may have already been questioning the sanity of their chosen sport.

Coming up the hill to start the second loop was where the true carnage started. I’ve seen a lot in my years around high school cross country, but let me tell you, I have never witnessed this amount of collapsing, vomiting and full-on sobbing - was this a cross country race or did some sort of plague strike!? But among it all, what do I see, but South’s seven just chugging along, picking off one runner at a time. What do you cheer in a situation like this? Drop the hammer and bury them felt a bit inappropriate for the moment, so I went with “Just keep moving!”

And move they did. Coming up that last long hill before the final lake loop, I saw as many walkers as runners, but our ladies powered their way up (props to Kyle Yan and Molly Hanlon for going down the hill to give them some encouragement), passing walkers and runners along the way.

And they carried that mentality all the way through the finish, as each of the top five either kicked past others down the final straight or surged to hold off a hard-charging challenger. Ashley wound up first for South in 93rd place, with Katie showing the best kick of her XC career to land 98th. Lilly pulled away from her teammates over the last half of the race to come in 137th, with Mariana 20 seconds back in 142nd. Ella finished up the scoring for South in 159th, with Saanvi in 179th and Aanya 186th, with South landing in 19th place in the team standings.

This will not likely go down as anyone’s most outstanding performance when you look at times at the end of the season, but it was a gutsy performance by the South ladies and I was proud of all of them.

The Guys

While no one would call it ideal conditions, the guys got the benefit of a start time 45 minutes earlier than the girls, so it was not quite as oppressive and it showed in the performances. Camden Coker led the way for the War Eagles. Once he got through the starting traffic, he established himself inside the top 30 and basically stayed there the entire race, taking 29th place and just a few seconds off his PR from last week. Grant Longstreth was next for South, starting out in ~50th before moving up over the 2nd mile inside the top 40 and holding from there to take 39th.

Josh Wilson, Jaxson Herman and Yash Panchal were running together through the first mile, but Josh used a strong lap around the lake to move up 20 spots. Jaxson was hanging onto him but Yash was 10 spots back. Meanwhile, Pierson Long was moving up quickly, closing the gap from 13 seconds after the first prison loop to just 5 back of Yash as they headed out for the second lap. It was more of the same for Josh over the final lap as he gained probably 10 more spots to take 51st.

Pierson had a solid day as he just kept moving up and wound up 63rd to place fourth for South and nab a new PR. Jaxson may not have held onto the early pace, but he still had a great day as he PR’d with his 66th place finish. Yash Panchal managed to hang on for a sub-20:00 effort that saw him take 80th and Ryan Gorgone just missed breaking 20 as he finished 7th for South in 87th. Don’t worry, Ryan, with back to back PR’s, I’m confident that barrier won’t last long.

Where did that leave South in the team standings? A pretty solid 7th place among the 28 varsity teams entered. But if you dig a little bit deeper, you can see the top two teams (Clarke Central and Gainesville) absolutely dominated the field. I talked to a coach from Gainesville during the meet and he said their bus was 45 minutes late, so they ended up dropping down to the varsity race instead of the championship race they were entered in. Which led me to a little detective work and I see in the pre-meet info, Clarke Central also showed their runners being entered in the championship race, so not sure if they suffered a similar bus mishap, but my takeaway is had those two teams run the race they were supposed to, South would have had an even more impressive top 5 finish.

But the good performances didn’t stop with the top 7, so I’m going to keep going as well. Ethan Lava and Anubhav Behera had a nice sprint-off to the finish, with Ethan narrowly edging him as they finished 115th & 116th. John Ryan was next in 123rd, with Christian Wiese 5 spots back in 128th. Coleman Burch narrowly missed a PR with his 163rd place finish, followed by Kyle Yan 185th. Lucas Rymer was just a second off of a new PR as well in 232nd, with Sohum Rao just behind in 237th. After that South closed with a group of freshmen, led by Kelvin Gao and his new PR in 239th, Vishwa Lingatlu 259th, Isaac Coates 263rd and Shreyas Jukkulker 265th. Nice job to all the guys.

SUBJECT: SFHS XC Newsletter August 29, 2023