Brookline, Wilson 7th at NTN Nationals!

A wintry 3000 miles from home and facing acres of mud, numerous hay bales, and the infamous roller coaster hills known as the "whoop-de-doo's," the Brookline XC Club ably represented Massachusetts and the Bay State League on Saturday at the Nike Team Nationals. The Warriors (if the MIAA will let me call them that) finished 7th overall (of 22 teams) with 256 points.

David Wilson, second to teammate Robert Gibson all XC season, held back slightly at the beginning, but moved up and ran with the second pack most of the race. Wilson caught and passed Gibson with about 500 meters to go and was the first Brookline runner across the line at NTN Nationals, placing 7th overall in 16:27. Gibson, running hard from the gun, faded a bit in the final stretch but hung on to place 16th in 16:36.

7.   David Wilson     16:27.0
16.  Robert Gibson    16:36.5
45.  Mike Burnstein   17:05.8
60.  Elliot Lehane    17:14.4
128. Chris Mercurio   18:00.4
140. Ryan Hardiman    18:12.7
151. Brendan Grove    18:26.1

(Don't be fooled by the times: even the race winner, Naperville's Chris Derrick, admitted "this course really eats you up.")

Congratulations to these kids and to the entire Brookline program on their State Championship, their NTN Regional championship, their performance in Portland, and a season for the ages!

Media notes: The team of announcers and athlete-commentators was generally good. Toni Reavis is, of course, the best, although he stumbled a few times -- understandable given that these were not star performers in a track race, but high school kids in a wild 5K race. Lauren Fleshman is a lively commentator. Alan Culpepper tries hard. Sadly, athlete stud Chris Solinsky was a dud as a commentator. The worst moment occurred while he was interviewing Lucas Walters, a runner who had undergone nine chemotherapy treatments in the past year. After Walters had described the cancer and its treatment, Solinsky awkwardly tried to segue back to the race, saying "Ok, well tell me how the race went today."