It can be hard this time of year because sometimes you don't know that you've run your last race until the results are posted and the points have been tallied and you see whether you're moving on or not.
It wasn't realistic to think that either Newton North XC team was going to make it to the State Meet this year, even with the slightly more generous six-division alignment of the EMass championships. Yet, I'm pretty sure North hoped to have one or two more individuals qualify.
On the girls side, Margo Gillis placed 7th in the D1 race and will compete as an individual at States. The NN team ran well to finish 10th out of 18 D1 teams in a blessedly smaller race (last year under the old alignment the D1 girls race had 189 runners, compared with 129 this year). Here are the results:
7 MARGO GILLIS 19:36
39 DEVIKA BANERJEE 21:18
53 JULIA SCHIANTARELLI 21:53
56 REBECCA TRAYNER 22:05
71 MEGHAN BELLEROSE 22:40
77 JULIA SCHLOSSMAN 22:53
84 MELISSA WEIKART 23:17
(http://www.coolrunning.com/results/10/ma/Nov13_MIAAEa_set7.shtml)
For the boys, it appears to have been a tough race for the team's "big three" of Dan Ranti, Ezra Lichtman, and Justin Keefe, who ran so well at the State Coaches meet last week. I'm guessing there was a reason (A fall? An injury?), although sometimes it's just the way the race develops and whether you're having a good day. Here are the results:
19 DAN RANTI 16:50
31 EZRA LICHTMAN 17:04
62 JUSTIN KEEFE 17:36
87 JON LONG 18:07
100 STEVEN MICHAEL 18:25
113 DAVID BUZBY 18:33
131 DAVID DEMAREST 18:51
http://www.coolrunning.com/results/10/ma/Nov13_MIAAEa_set1.shtml
Overall, it was a good day for Bay State teams. For the girls, Weymouth won D1 (a first in the program's history, I believe), Wellesley won D3, and Needham qualified for the State meet out of D2 with their 4th-place finish. For the boys, Brookline was 2nd in D1 and Walpole was 3rd in D3 to move on to the State meet in Gardner next week.
Also deserving special mention, Weymouth's Steve Sollowin won the D1 race with the fastest time of the day in any division, running 15:47.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
16 comments:
I don’t know much about the boys team so I can’t comment on them but the North girls ran with a lot of spirit this season. They had a bunch of personal bests, did better than expected in the Bay State League Championship and should be proud of their accomplishments. I’m sure the Tigers will have a great indoor season and I look forward to watching them compete. I hope whoever wrote the previous post stays home. North doesn’t need fans like that.
Sounds like NN had a tough end to XC. I would like to offer the view that one championship race, so early in people's running career, can only be seen as educational for those people running in it.
It's a great opportunity; and you learn more about how your talent and motivation play out in a race that matters. You could have ran in Class As three years in a row, but it will always be a different experience because you'll be at different ability levels-and each level has it's own set of problems and tactics to work out.
Therefore I wouldn't wish embarrassment to people who are learning a whole new set of experiences. To offer myself as an example, I always came out of the start of races last on the team, even if I ended up placing 3rd-6th. I thought too many people went out too fast, and I didn't want to get caught in that group that burnt out after the first mile. Unfortunately I didn't realize until my second to last HS xc race the fact that I was not considering the possibility that I could also have been keep myself back mentally. I always ended my races with a huge kick, which turned out to mean I had too much gas left in the tank. As my racing times were getting faster, this second possibility became more and more evident as I wound up getting lost in the middle pack of runners at large meets, and wouldn't be constantly pushing myself to the limit (especially in the middle 2k-4k of the 5k races). It wasn't until my last HS xc race that I still came out rather conservatively, but started pushing myself right away from the 2k on, and I had a great performance. The next year in college I decided I would go out even less conservatively, but surprise surprise I had overestimated in my transition from 5k to an 8k race and ended up one being one of the victims who went out too fast and bombed. I still had much to learn.
Motivation leading up to and on race day, a new experience of tactics- these are things you learn by racing, and you should never look to embarrassment for not getting the result you want. Instead look to educate yourself on ways you can improve your many future races.
Great post Clay. i was doing some research on Gardner for next week and looked at the 2004 results again. What a great day for you and the Tigers. The BSC has won the last 2 D1 AS champs at Gardner - I hope that's an good omen for us. i also looked again at the 2007 results - now 2 races on different days but if we take the times from the 2 races it looks like this:
Brookline 2007
Gibson 14:25
Wilson 14:30
Burnstein 14:44
Lehane 14:46
Grove 15:13
Newton North 2004
barnicle 14:09
Polgar 14:44
Lloyd 14:54
Chebot 15:09
Brecher 15:10
In a hypothetical mythical matchup of those 2 great teams with those results a dual meet would go brookline 26 NN 29. What a race that would be.
It was certainly a disappointing day for us (the NN boys) individually. That being said, I would like to point out that Dan Ranti did qualify to race at Gardner, and John Long had one of his better races this season. While, beyond those two, we didn't get the results we were looking for, I fail to see why we should be embarrassed for running hard and having less-than-stellar races, and I thank Jon for pointing that out. Furthermore, I am somewhat perplexed and disturbed by the following excerpt from the conveniently anonymous contributor's post: "it is embarrassing to disrespect the league, sport, and competitors by some of the actions of the team." If anybody is able to enlighten me as to what our alleged misconduct was, I would be more than grateful.
Congratulations to the Brookline boys, to Steve, to Margo, to Dan, and to all the others who will be racing next weekend.
EL
Thanks for the comment, Ezra. And (belated) congratulations to Dan for qualifying as an individual! I don't know how I missed that the first time around.
I think that those who are successful in sport (and other endeavors) balance two seemingly contradictory feelings: hating to lose, but being able to accept that the possibility of losing is the price to play the game or run the race. No one who makes it to the top can be satisfied with losing, but neither can they be afraid of the possibility.
As for Anonymous, I don't know what your private injury is, but you've come across in your comments as immature and petty. If you have something positive to contribute, or have some legitimate criticism that you can defend, then I'd love to hear it. If not, then you're probably better off (and I would appreciate it) if you save your commentary for the forums on letsrun.com.
Coach Glennon,
Great post comparing those two teams. But I think in 04 Polgar had a slight off day compared to how well he ran at class a's the week before getting third in the snow. You guys had a great team in 07 though. I would love some year for a Newton North vs. brookline alumni race.
Chris,
Warrior Run on November 28th at Larz 9:30 AM. Most of our 2007 team will be there. Round up yours and let's have at it. Happens every year so if we can't get it done in a couple weeks maybe we can do it next year.
Post a Comment