EA Invite

After the excellent race on Wednesday, with PRs almost across the board, expectations were a little lower for the East Aurora Invitational this weekend.  And when the rain woke me up at 6am and I took a look at the radar, it seemed times might be on the slow side.  But never count the Warriors out!

There were occasional showers throughout the meet, but the East Aurora course holds up pretty well in wet conditions, and our Varsity Boys were the first ones to take advantage of the fast course.  With East Aurora dominating the race, and Lake Shore, Lockport, Frontier and Orchard Park all outrunning us up front, it was  hard to imagine a favorable outcome, but with only 49 seconds separating our top seven, we were able to put seven ahead of the 5th men from each of those teams, and placed 3rd behind EA and Lockport.

The girls thought that a place higher than third was not possible, with EA and Canandaigua entered, but at the starting line we noticed that the top girls were going to be spectating, and the race for second would be wide open.  At the mile mark, it was tough to score precisely, but it was clear that Lockport, Frontier and Willy South were all ahead of us.  Our girls moved up nicely during the second mile, and had closed to within six points of Lockport.  Then the third mile was huge, with continued advancement, allowing the girls to capture second place, sixteen points ahead of Lockport!

The JV Boys know that, while we might not have a real presence at the front of races, we have one of the deepest teams in the state, and East Aurora was not going to be anywhere near 73 points ahead of us.  The first mile saw East Aurora going out in their usual front positions, while we were mixed in with about 10-12 runners from other schools.  But the second mile started to go our way, as we moved up and the front of the race started to look like a dual meet between EA and Schroeder, with EA holding a solid edge.  The third mile saw the trend continue, with our top ten runners moving up nicely.  With a third of a mile to go, it looked like we might actually have a shot, and sure enough, our momentum continued as we wound up putting seven ahead of their fifth, for a 28-32 victory!

The JV Girls were down to seven runners, due to illness, but they were determined to continue the positive performance streak.  Nanaka got out near the top ten, with Kara also out quickly.  The others were more conservative early.  Over the course of the race, Nanaka moved up steadily, finally taking fifth and spoiling East Aurora's bid for a perfect score of 15.  Kara made a run at my niece, who was running in tenth place, the final T-shirt spot, but settled for a big PR and 14th place.  Megan moved up steadily throughout the race, and Rachel led Liz and Courtney through the crowd, to all place in the top 29 and pull the team to a third place finish, just eight points away from the second place trophy.