Section V XC Championship Review

OK, how did the computer fare in projecting results at the Section V XC Championship meet?  Complete results are available at Yen Timing (for now, easily available on the right-hand side of the home page, later you will have to dig into archived results), or if you like to see the Tully speed ratings, you can head on over to TullyRunners.

The biggest news of Sectional weekend across the state, is the meets that weren't.  Due to Frankenstorm Sandy, Sections 1, 9 and 11 all had to postpone their meets - Sections 1 and 9 are competing today, Section 11 is racing tomorrow.  Interestingly, the near end of Long Island (Section 8 - Nassau County) is not going to have a Sectional meet, and instead will use their merged results from the County Championship meet.

The best way to look at our own results is in the merge, where both the Boys and Girls managed to snag 10th place out of all of Section V.  This was a pleasant surprise for the Boys who, as predicted, finished 9th in Class A.  The merged results moved us ahead of Athena and Victor, who we actually beat in dual meet scoring, 26-29 and 28-29, respectively.  So, the Class A race had the "perfect storm" of distribution that allowed them to sneak ahead of us.  Props to the Addison squad - the Class C champs managed to place 17th in the merged results.

Victor turned the table on us in the Girls merged results, beating us by one point, even though we also beat them 27-28 in dual meet scoring.  HF-L and Mendon were the teams from Class B that moved us down from 7th in the Class A race.

So, back to the predictions...

Boys

Class A
As expected, R-H took home the title (for the fourth? year in a row).  Fairport did not match expectations, so Thomas, with a very fine effort, grabbed second and Irondequoit was third.  The top six finishers went to plan with the exception of Keith Pease edging Tyler Ranke for third.  The surprise was the performance of  McQuaid's Nick Ciolkowski, whose blazing finish grabbed the last state meet slot from Sasha.

Class B
The computer correctly called Mendon in this one, but Mendon only scored 35, rather than the 38 predicted!  In all, the computer got the top 5 correct, and didn't know about Aquinas, who finished ahead of Batavia for sixth.

I correctly overrode the computer is calling the win by Jack Wesley, but JT Pagnelli surprised us both by moving ahead of Will Ronchetti for second.  But the last two spots were claimed by Northrup and Douglas, not Mullen and Demmer.

Class C
So, I did not override the computer to pick Addison, but they took 26 points off the predicted score to earn the mild upset over Way-Co by 14 points.  Notre Dame-Batavia didn't get killed by their fifth man and moved up to 3rd, preventing us from getting the rest of the top five perfect.

Jeff Antolos was predicted to win by a minute, and he made it a minute-and-a-half instead, almost claiming the fastest time of the day [I did mention to Mickey Burke, just after the two-mile mark, that he was behind Antolos, in case he needed some motivation in that part of the race].  A frosh from Williamson spoiled the chance for a perfect record on selecting the individuals in this race.  I imagine we will see him at the top of the results page at Sectionals in a year or two.

Class D
Cal-Mum, even with a fifth man running over 20 minutes, ended up the surprise winner in this one, besting four ranked teams (Campbell-Savona finished four points behind).  For the individuals, the computer was 4 of 5 on the individuals.

Girls

Class A
R-H got the win, as called, over Penfield and Canandaigua, but the scores were 61-83-100, not within the eight or so points expected.  Irondequoit jumped over Schroeder and Thomas for fifth.

Eileen O'Hara finished fourth to be the only girl not called by the computer to make the team.

Class B
The team race went as expected with HF-L effectively winning a dual meet over Mendon.  Mercy edged Brighton by four for fourth.

And the computer was 5-for-5 on predicting the individuals.

Class C
Byron-Bergen had a huge race, but fell one point short of upsetting Wayland-Cohocton.  With Notre Dame only up in C for the Boys, not the Girls, we went 4-for-5 in picking individuals, with a fine race by Heather Kramberg of Williamson getting the last spot by one second.

Class D
As mentioned Notre Dame stayed down in D for the girls and was able to beat Oakfield-Alabama by seven points.  The dearth of information available in this class meant only two of the five individuals predicted made it to States.

Congratulations to all of the Section V teams and individuals that will represent our area at Elma Meadows this weekend!  And there was a lot of very fine running in all of the races in adverse conditions, after such a mild season.