Sometimes it happens that after thousands of miles of training, countless early morning weekend practices, and years of finishing somewhere in the pack, you experience a race that answers every question you ever had -- ever will have -- about whether it was all worth it. The kind of race I have in mind ends in a victory that is well-earned but wholly unexpected, a victory over a worthy champion who seemed beyond reach.
I don't know for sure whether Jake Gleason feels that way about his brilliant win in the 2-Mile last night, but I sure hope he does. Not only did he take the win in a big race against his team's chief rival in, arguably, their strongest event, he did it by running an 11-second PR, breaking 10:00 for the first time, and executing a patient and gutsy race and a perfect kick to come from well back and win by the slimmest of margins against the reigning Bay State XC runner-up. It really doesn't get much better than that. I'm also willing to bet that no one, including Jake himself, expected that to happen, but it did, and I hope it's a race he remembers for the rest of his life.
The 2M was only one highlight in a meet that featured many, including other extraordinarily close races. Unfortunately for the Warriors, Newton North athletes won all of them. As a result, the closeness of the meet and the competitiveness of the two teams is not accurately reflected in the score, which shows North on the winning end of a 63-23 rout. The very first race set the tone of the entire meet as Dan Ranti won the mile by less than a tenth of a second over Brookline's Christian Sampson, 4:38.01 to 4:38.09. The Warriors put four runners under 4:45, but came up with only four points.
In the next event, Ezra Lichtman won tby a similarly miniscule margin, taking the 1000 over Will Jackson 2:41.42 to 2:41.55, with Justin Keefe running a PR 2:41.98 for 3rd. Those two races turned two-tenths of a second into an 8-point swing in the Tigers' favor, and although there was a lot of track and field left, it was an insurmountable hill for the Warriors to climb.
In fact, the Tigers would not lose a single event. Isaiah Penn ran a PR 1:25.52 to win the 600 with Alon Soran dipping under 1:30 to take 3rd. Ben Kiley won the 300, 55, and high jump, Faisal Mayanja led a NN sweep in the 55 hurdles, and Con(n)or Ebbs led an orange sweep in the shot put. The 2M was Brookline's best chance for a win, but Gleason took care of that, and then the NN 4x400 team put an exclamation mark on the night by winning in 3:34.50.
Results on Cool Running
No preview of NN-Weymouth boys next week; it's time to give the attention to the girls team as they take on the defending Bay State champs.
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4 comments:
FYI - Steve Sollowin was the Bay State XC champion. You could go with the 10th place finisher in the AS XC as Chewy's finest race.
Thanks for the correction. As usual, it was a mental lapse while writing in a hurry... Anyway, no disrespect meant to Mr. Sollowin, who was a worthy XC champion!
.22 seconds separated the 1-2 in the 1000, 1M, and 2M. That could have been a 12 point swing pretty easily.
yeah but chewy beat Mr. sollowin at AS XC
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