Plymouth John Sanborn Invitational 10/11/19

Results Here When Available

Today’s Challenge: Find Ethan and Mark!

A nice cool day greeted the team as they rolled out of bed on a Friday at probably 10 or 11 am, uncaring of the fact that their coaches were trapped in a cinder block classroom learning how to deal with unruly students (or secretly scoring fictitious State Meets). Despite all the training, it was not needed today, as even the siblings on the team behaved themselves at Plymouth. The course at Plymouth (suspiciously fast, according to one eternally skeptical coach whom you all know well), was the third version of the Invite course over the past three years and was by far the fastest - despite two trips up the mighty “S-TURN” hill. Strangely, Sophia Reynolds ran the exact same time - to the second - that she ran last year to set the now-retired course record, v.2018. But I get ahead of myself…

We arrived early and brought ourselves on a course walk, during which Maddy, Cassidy, and maybe Sophia10 managed to catch falling leaves, ensuring them good luck for 2 ½ hours and making their success in the race to come a foregone conclusion. Despite the information sheet CLEARLY stating that the boys would run first, we discovered that in fact the girls were up first, toeing the line at 4:00 sharp. Off the course like a rocket, the entire field zipped down the hill and out into the very beautiful Plymouth trails. Sophia9 took the win and established a new course record, while Sophia10 closed well over the final hill to place second, giving MV a whopping 3 points after two runners. Emma re-established herself in the third position and finishing 5th, while mini-Emma (Sam-A-Lama (Samantha)) was only a few seconds back in 8th. Having the race of the day and closing out the scoring for MV was Maddy, racing in her VERY OWN BRAND NEW MAGIC SPIKES! They worked! Violet and Cassidy each ran PR’s (as did almost everyone else behind them) to place 6th and 7th on the team, and ensuring a spot in the varsity race at Capital Area next Thursday.

It was a similar sight in the boys race, with a PR here, a PR there, here a PR, there a PR, everywhere a PR, PR! Ethan blasted off the line with the big boys, eventually settling down and crossing in 13th place. Winning a surprise medal in 20th was Mark, while Christian, Marshall, and Isaac all ran great races to comprise MV’s top 5. Elisha and Oliver, again with PR’s, rounded out the top 7.

At the awards, they mistakenly announced the girls team winners...using the boys scores. And Kingswood was SO HAPPY to place third! A bit of a bummer for them. As it turned out, the boys placed an outstanding 4th, only two (TWO!) points out of third...or...as I typed that last sentence I looked over and noticed that there might have been a scoring error. I initially saw that they gave the boy from White Mountain (who only had one runner and shouldn’t have counted in team scoring) a team score. I rescored it removing him and a Lin-Wood runner who had also been left in, and got totally different scores, even more different than if they hadn’t scored those two. SO…(drumroll)...the correct score, Irving-Verified, goes Oyster River - 18, Bow - 74, Merrimack Valley - 115, Kennett - 124, and Kingswood 140 (not 110! Crazy). Congratulations on third, boys! That’s two years in a row they’ve messed up our score. We missed out on the world’s smallest plaque, but I’ll remedy that. Anyhow, the girls looked really sad when we were announced as 4th, which made things fun for me as I had already figured out the gender error. When the correct scores were given for the girls, they had backed up their top seed billing with a solid victory, 30 to 49 over a very solid Kennett team currently ranked 10th in the state. Overall, a great day as we approach championship season!

Champions!