9/4/24 - Coe-Brown
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Wednesday kicked off the long-awaited start to the competitive XC season; a hotter day than we would have liked but not terrible. Coe-Brown were the hosts, a course the current seniors have only run once, 2 years ago. With bibs and a timing company it gave the feel of a very low-key weekend invitational. The girls were certainly well-rested and Coach Irving wasn’t sure what to expect as we haven’t had many high-intensity days (although our one hill day was a definite winner!). Several local DII teams were in attendance; Coe-Brown, John Stark, St. Thomas, and a Pembroke team with too few runners to score. Interestingly, MV was the largest team on the line, 1 more than John Stark and 2 more than Coe-Brown.
After a clean start, it was off to the ¾ mile mark to see how the race would unfold. After a few tense minutes of waiting the lead pack came into view, and there was Lily, escorted by two Coe-Brown runners! Not too far back was Maddy, then Keira, then Emily followed by a fairly tight pack of the rest of the 10th, 11th, and 12th graders. The 9th graders, Raven and Emma, were testing this racing thing out a little farther back and moving along just fine!
At the next viewing point at about the 1 ¼ point not much had changed - Lily was running very controlled and clearly was in charge of the race despite having two tag-alongs. The only other noticeable was that Emily had moved into MV’s third position, with Reagan, Tessa, Keira, Jessi, Kendra, and Nicole clumped fairly close together. Just before the 2 mile mark Lily had managed to lose one pursuer, and Reagan was closing the gap on Emily. Notably, Jessi was looking great ⅔ of the way through her first race in 2 years! The weather unfortunately was not Kendra weather and necessitated a stop to her race (but Saturday is looking great!).
Fast forward to the finish, and who is it coming around the final turn? LILY!! She said it wasn’t an easy run, but she sure knows how to make a hard run look easy then. In winning she is only a few seconds off her time from last year’s divisional meet time, and she defeated at least one runner who qualified for Meet of Champions last year. Not a bad start! A slightly bruised Maddy rolled in for a strong second for MV and 7th overall. Race of the day though? Reagan! Nursing a bandaged finger (injured while trying to make a safe home for her fishing worms (true story!), she managed an overall 11th place, a team 3rd place, and a 20-ish second all-time PR (personal record). Who does that in the first (hot) meet of the season? Someone who has a LOT of potential, that’s who. Emily rolled in about 50 seconds later with a solid race, followed by Nicole, solid and dependable as always. In fact, this was Nicole’s first top-5 team finish and earned the Captain’s nod (there were a lot of nominations!) for the first Awesome Award of the year. She has a snazzy jersey to rep during warm-up on Saturday, before she reassigns it after the race. Keira and Tessa wrapped up the top 7, while Jessi was just behind with a huge victory in simply finishing the race. It has been a long time coming! Raven, sporting a fantastically rugged and bloody scrape from a late fall finished just ahead of a gutsy run from Emma, both of whom ran first-ever races to be proud of, in the hardest high school sport there is.
Overall it was a great start to the season and one that we can be proud of!