Middle School Madness!
/Nearly two thousand middle schoolers took to the trails of New Hampshire this weekend for the Middle School State XC Championships. Division I and II were held in Londonderry while Division III was held at Coe-Brown Academy in Northwood.
Merrimack Valley Middle School represented the future of MVXC at the DII championships, and the future looks good. Highlighting the racing in Londonderry was Samantha’s 5th place finish, the best MV finish since 2007! Sophia placed 24th, putting two 7th graders in the top 25. Violet (72th) and Anna (86th) also raced well for MV, which did not score as a team due to only having four finishers. On the boys side, Mark was the top finisher, placing 67th of the 115 finishers. Isaac (99th), Marshall (105th), Mark A (112th), and Ryan (113th) also placed for MV, who finished 17th as a team.
In DIII, Sophia (SRen) easily improved on her runner-up finish of a year ago to WIN (!) the race, becoming the first Andover or MV runner to win an individual title at the middle school level. She lead from the gun and while her time was a little off her course record of a few weeks ago due to the heat, the outcome was never in question. She was followed by Trinity in 102nd, Page (188th), and Marley (194th). In a side note, Coach Irving’s home district of Newfound not only had a complete team (rare), but garnered a surprise second place on the day as a team. Must have been my hat, or the fact that some strange guy was cheering for them in the woods and they wanted to run away as quickly as possible. On the boys side, Jack led the way for Andover in 120th place, followed by Dante (127th), mRen (not to be confused with MRen) in 129th, Evan (141st), Enrico (177th), and Henry (179th) - all 5th or 6th graders except Jack. Andover placed 28th as a team.