On a gorgeous day at Great Meadows, Albemarle raced at the Virginia XC State Championships! We drove up the day before and left school early to get a glimpse of the NCAA regional championships at Panorama Farms. Watching the UVA men dominate was an amazing learning experience for all of the girls and we took note their amazing pack strategies! Without a single guy in the top ten they still won by quite a few points because all of their guys ran together through 7k.
Then we headed up to the plains for a course preview and shake 'n bake. The night was spent at the hotel with an Olive Garden dinner, ice baths, and a showing of McFarland. Early Saturday morning, the girls woke up to run a one mile shakeout and eat breakfast before the big day!
The skies were clear but it was pretty cold, temperatures around 40 degrees to start off the meet. 5A went last, girls and then boys so we didn't race until well after noon. Coach Coffman spread the traditional Panorama Farms ginkgo leaves, to remind us of the training and support from back home in our starting box and the gun went off.
Arianna DeBoer placed 3rd overall, earning All-State honors and running a PR of 18:44 after moving up a long way throughout the race! Check out her interview here: https://va.milesplit.com/videos/408594 Meme Zarzyski was next for the Pats running a season's best of 20:07. Olivia St Amand had a PR running 20:23, Abby Murphy also had a PR running .9 seconds better than her Great American breakout race in 20:31. Hanna Guyton ran a season's best and placed 41st in her first ever state meet. All of our 5 scorers (except the queen Arianna) ran a smart race and stuck together for the first two miles to help optimize our team score. They pushed each other really well. We knew that we didn't have the fastest girls in the whole meet, but our team depth is so strong that with a pack attack we could preform well. Beth Shifflett also had a good race, chasing her teammates in running 21:06. She had one of the strongest finishes of the day and really started to kick at the 600 to go mark. She was a couple seconds off of a Stafford girl at the turn, I screamed that she had to catch this girl and within 5 meters she outstripped literally with a smile on her face! What an incredible way to finish her high school XC career. Madeline Kronebusch ran 21:52 to finish out our top 7.
Albemarle girls finished 3rd with 109 points, after being seeded 7th. Our girls ran their hardest and were all proud of the results. Also special thanks to the alternates, Sarah Leech, Cassidy Guyton, and Lillian Peskova who made the trip out and were the most supportive girls on the trip!
This is the end of the official season but most of our top 12 will head out to Nike Southeast regionals for a big meet experience and PR's before track season! Nice job ladies!
Comments