A small group of patriots kick started the 2021 cross country season in Northern Virginia at the biggest meet (and first invitational!) that any of the girls had been to since our last full season in 2019. There were over 25 teams in the girls varsity race and almost 200 runners in the race and this was just one of many categories that was contested at the Great Meadows foundation today. It was a great way for the girls to gain experience over the 5k distance as many of the group were in their first race ever or their first race in a few seasons and there was the added bonus of the course being run on some of the same terrain as this year's state meet.
Jenna Coleman, coming off of a 8th place finish at last year's state meet led the way for the team with a strong 9th place finish today amongst a bunch of strong competitors and 20:12 clocking.
She was followed closely by sophomore Maddie Gypson (19th, 20:38) who is also a top returner in the 5A classification and Hanna Guyton, in her first cross country race since November 2019 who finished out the top three with a 41st place finish. Sophomores Savannah Meriwether and Alexis Alms battled it out all of the way to the line to run 23:29 and 23:30 with Alexis getting the closest of any of the experienced runners to her PR - only 19 seconds off. Savannah later told everyone that she thought it was her best finish ever and it is very believable from the attitude that she showed attacking the end of this race.
Eva Weaver ran 24:00 for 85th overall to give the team 4 sophomores on the top seven already this season. Emily Uthlaut, in her first ever race (and as a freshman) seriously impressed everyone with a 24:54 in only her second week of training. Her guts in taking on the distance which she had only run a few times before and all out finish were super inspiring to watch.
Sophomore Autumn Murphy in her first race as a patriot ran 27:30 and the lone senior on the trip, Grace Kohler returned to racing for the first time since 2019 to finish in 28:19.
These performances led Albemarle to place 7th (1 place higher than our 2019 showing at this meet) and beat all but one 5A team. The girls had to be super flexible all week after a lot of disrupted training due to the heat and even with the race time pushed up 30 minutes today it was still wickedly hot, humid, and sunny on the course but they took it all in stride. It's exciting to get our cross country season started on such a good note and there a lot of meets and time trials in the next few weeks to give the team more chances to test their fitness and get in some good early season races!
Comments