14-1

Congratulations to the Boys team for improving their record to 14-1 yesterday, with a big win over Sutherland, and a close one over Victor as well. The 1-2-3 finish against Sutherland clinched the meet*, but the effort across the board was evident. I can't count how many of our team members had a shot at a yellow jersey late in the race, and went after them hard. Some of the team-wide statistics include the following:

19 boys beat the computer-generated prediction by over 15 seconds. This is especially impressive, since the predicted time was based on each runner's best race of the season, so far.

15 boys ran the same course last year. The median improvement was 1:57! Some of the most stunning improvements came from Kenny, 6:22 faster; Alex, 4:39; Arjun, 3:22; AJ, 2:54; Elliot, 2:19; Justin, 2:18; Arik, 2:17; Tom, 1:57; Tristan, 1:56; John, 1:50.

The freshmen continued their very fine running with the top 5 finishing in 20:13 - 21:05. Last year the top freshman ran 22:24; this year we had 7 freshmen under that time.

The girls also turned in a great performance, not only to defeat Gates, but to prevail over Spencerport as well! That bring the girls record to 7-8 on the season, which is well ahead of the pre-season prediction (3 to 5 wins for the entire season). Some of the notable statistics are as follows:

7 of the girls beat the computer-generated prediction by over 15 seconds.

From last year, Kristen improved by 2:58, Sarah by 1:36 and Karen by 1:21.

Val ran quite well, to beat two girls ranked ahead of her and finish 2nd (just two seconds out of first, by the time her kick ended).


* for those readers unfamiliar with how you can "clinch" a XC meet, here is a quick note about dual meet scoring: the top 7 runners from each team receive a place from 1-14, in the order of their finish (1 for the first finisher, 2 for the second, etc.) - each runner's place is their "score". You add the lowest 5 scores from each team to calculate the team score, and the low score wins. If a team finishes 1-2-3, then the worst the other 4 finishers can score is 11-12-13-14. So, the team score is 29 (1+2+3+11+12, are the lowest 5 scores), and the opposing team scores 30 (4+5+6+7+8).