Well, the first week of cross country is officially in the books, as evidenced by my hoarse voice.  I’ll take it as a good sign that the runners are giving me something to cheer for.

It may have been a bit humid and the grass a little tall and on the damp side, but the temperature was pretty mild and we were blessed with some overcast skies, so for a mid-August race conditions were about as good as one could hope.  And for all those new runners, congrats, you all ran a PR (personal record) on Saturday.

The Boys

Nate Verska and Ben Bergey meant business right from the gun, as the two of them jumped to the front of the 200+ runners off the line and by the time they came around for the first pass about a half mile in, the two were leading a pack of 6 that had already separated from the rest.  At the end of lap 1, the front pack was still together, with Ben leading and Nate on his shoulder and were 10 seconds clear of the next group. I’ll skip the next mile, as it  was pretty much a repeat of the first, with the only difference being that front 6 really started stringing out.  Things got interesting around 2 miles, when Ben must have decided he was not going to leave his fortunes to another round of rock, paper, scissors and made a move to separate.  Ben did not look back from there and opened the season with a 20-second PR (16:05) to secure his first high school XC win, with Nate just a few seconds back to grab 2nd.  

Ben Winn may have been in his first HS race, but he raced like a veteran, staying in control and from a starting point of 40th, he steadily picked off runners throughout the race and finished 24th in a fine debut time of 17:50 as he was South’s 3rd runner.  

As all that was happening up front, Harris Garmon & Wyatt Longstreth were starting out around mid-pack but by the end of the first lap both had already moved up 20-30 spots and were finding their rhythm.  At the halfway point, they were in the same pack and starting to work together and stayed that way through the rest of the race, but behind a slightly faster final mile, Wyatt was South’s 4th in 63rd place and Harris finished up the scoring for South in 65th.  

As for others in the varsity race, they finished pretty close to one another, with Adam Zorko taking 116th, Rishi Nagappin 120th, Jackson Waddell 123rd (and with a new PR) and Josh Wilson 128th.  On the team front, West Forsyth showed a pretty clear strategy from the start; let #1 runner Trent Bell go out with the leaders and then pack run as many as you can the rest of the way.  It proved very successful, with Bell taking 5th overall and 2-6 all together through the first mile and while they started to string out a bit from there, each runner stayed pretty connected to the one in front of him as West put 5 runners in the top 20 and 7 in top 31 places.  It was a pretty solid victory, with Etowah taking 2nd and South finishing 3rd.   

For the JV boys race, Freshman Grant Gibson showed a lot of grit in his first race, holding around 20-25th for most of the race before closing well on the last lap to finish 17th as South’s first man in (worth noting he was just the 2nd overall among freshmen in the race).  But Grant wasn’t the only 9th grader contributing in this race, as Matthew Bovenkerk was next in at 34th.  Then you had Junior KD Vadlamani start his season off by dropping over a minute off his PR to finish 45th.  A pair of sophomores rounded out the top 5 for South, with Kellen Cain in 66th and Kaleb Hammond 92nd, leading to a 6th place team finish for the JV.

The Girls

For an early season meet, Pickens had pretty high caliber talent in the girl’s race.  There were 4 of the top 10 finishers from last year’s 7A state meet and 3 top 20 finishers from 6A all toeing the line.  But if you were hoping for a lot of suspense in this one, South made sure you were disappointed.  

A few girls were out front with Carmel & Izzy Yonas in the early stages, including 7A runner-up Ashley Thompson of Gainesville, but by the time they finished the first mile, Carmel and Izzy had opened up a gap and never looked back.  Meanwhile, South was starting out strong, with the top 5 all sitting in the top 30.  Janisha Patil started conservative but had moved up to 13th at the mile and was looking strong.  Caroline Turner had gone out with the leaders at the start, but by the mile was looking like she may have regretted that decision as she had faded a bit and Molly Hanlon was holding on at ~35th.

Carmel and Izzy buried the field over the second lap and at the two mile, Carmel started to pull away a bit, but by this point there was no question that they would complete a 1-2 sweep to match the guys.  Carmel cruised to an easy victory in 19:28, with Izzy 25 seconds back.

As for the rest of South, Janisha had climbed as high as 9th place, but she gave up a few spots over the final lap to take 14th place as South’s 3rd runner.  It’s exciting to see her 21:07 opening time as it is nearly a minute faster than her first race last year.  I give Caroline a lot of credit, as she managed to steady herself and gut out the last half of the race to take 32nd, with Molly holding the 5th spot in 40th overall. South had 3 other runners make their varsity debut and gain valuable experience, with Emily Barnes landing in 76th, Pragna Veeravelli in 98th and Madeline Braley 104th.  

In the team standings, Cambridge didn’t have the horsepower up front to run with South, but showed incredible depth putting 7 runners in the top 28 spots and having an impressive 1-7 gap of only 1:30, enough to notch a 27 point victory over South.  All in all a good start for the ladies, but I think it is safe to say South’s girls success as a team will be defined by tightening the 3-5 gap (1:32 last week).  At their best last year, South had much tighter grouping - when winning region, 3-6 runners had only a 41 second gap, so something to keep an eye on this season.

With 200 runners in the girl’s JV race, there was plenty of competition for every runner and South sprinkled finishers throughout enroute to a 9th place team finish.  Leading the way for South was Neeti Jain, who took 30th overall, followed not too far back by Gigi Grady in 36th.  Next were two newcomers, with Jules Min in 46th and Kaitlyn Stinson in 70th.  Shea Czajkoski led a group of 4 runners through pretty much the entire race (all finished within 7 seconds of each other), but it was ultimately Shea who took the 5th spot in 75th.

As I think particularly about the JV races at Pickens, I do want to provide a piece of unsolicited feedback for the runners - when you hear someone yelling for you, don’t look over with that look that says “who in the world is cheering for me?”  We’re cross country parents - it’s what we do.  And even if you don’t know us, we are learning your names.  We drive an hour or more every Saturday to catch a few brief glimpses of our child running in their race.  If we are going to be out there for several hours watching 4-6 races, we may as well learn who’s who and cheer for all the South runners.  

First thing, if you’ve never been to Lamar Murphy Park in Jefferson, GA, don’t be alarmed when you turn onto the road where the park is and see the razor-wire fence of the Jackson County Correctional Institute.  A little disturbing?  Maybe, but you are in the right place.   

They are also breaking this meet up into a championship and a regular division.  They will take the top teams (including South Forsyth) and run them in races separate from other teams.  Which means even though runners are split similar to last week (varsity run first, then everyone else runs JV), there will actually be an extra race between the South races.  Coach sent the times for the South races, so that’s the schedule you should pay attention to.  

Good news is that this will make the races a bit less crowded, but it doesn’t really change the competitive landscape too much.  South should again be in the hunt for the team titles.  For the boys, they’ll be going up against a strong Pace Academy team led by the Blaha brothers, who will likely be fighting up front as well, along with Roswell, Brookwood & Parkview.  On the girls side, it would appear Parkview will be the toughest competition for South, though there are a number of schools with strong individual runners that may push Carmel & Izzy up front.  

See you in Jefferson - and you may want to leave the striped shirt or orange jump suit at home.