District Cross Country Meet at Cedarville University

The regular cross country season ended on October 17 with our GWOC conference championship meet. Post season, all schools move on to districts and then move on to regionals if they place high enough at the district meet or have their season end if they fail to place high enough at districts.  For runners, the difference between a regular season meet and districts is that only seven runners from a school can run at the district meet. Two runners are selected as alternatives. During regular season meets and at the GWOC conference meet, up to twenty runners can run in the varsity meet and an unlimited number can run in the open meet.  

Before the conference meet, nine girls from the cross country team were told they were going to be one of the seven running at the district meet, which was to be run at Cedarville University, or they were going to be alternates. Alyssa was one of them. However, which specific  girls were running and which specific girls were going to be alternates was not divulged to the girls until two days before the district meet. We figured that Alyssa would be one of the girls running but we weren't 100% sure. There were numerous girls who had faster times than she did and indeed one of the girls who ended up being an alternate had a faster PR time than Alyssa and another girl selected to run (but the other girl´s time was only better than Alyssa's by one second so the two were comparable runners) . We were relieved that Alyssa would be running in districts; Alyssa said that the cross country coaches told the girls that just because they were selected to run at districts didn't mean they'd run at regionals if we made it out of districts. If the girls performed poorly at districts, they may lose their spot and one of the alternates may run in their stead.  Suffice it to say that Alyssa felt pressure to run well. Spoiler alert: she did(!)...

In the district meet, Alyssa's school was in the Southwest District. Southwest was then divided into two groups of teams that competed in two races. Group A had twelve teams running in it, including our nemeses Beveacreek and Centerville. The top four teams in that group would move on to regionals. Group B had fewer teams, ten, and the top three teams in it would move on to regionals. Springboro was in Group B which not only didn't include Beavercreek and Centerville, but it also started later in the morning, thereby giving everyone a little bit more time to sleep Saturday morning. We were fans of being in Group B! 

Donnie had a board meeting Saturday morning that he couldn´t miss; the firm had too many big decisions to vote on for him to not attend. Donnie left the board meeting early to drive to Cedarville from Dayton. Abby and I drove the forty minutes to Cedarville and met Donnie at the meet.

Alyssa and her teammates ran well. Springboro came in 1st place out of the ten teams in its group. Heading for regionals- YAY! Alyssa personally ran really well. She PR'd and came in 3rd place out of the Springboro runners and 8th overall out of over sixty runners in the meet. It was great that she felt good when she ran and had enough energy at the end to sprint all the while running each mile faster than she'd run in previous races.

This Saturday, the girls run at regionals for a chance to make it to state. Making it to state is a long shot based on what we know about the schools that we'll be competing against but at least the girls have the opportunity to try... We are thankful for that.

Here are a few pictures from the day: 

Pants off- mask on- the morning was definitely chilly; I think it was in the mid 40's at run time. The girls kept their long sleeve shirts and pants on until they had to take them off right before the race.

Getting ready to run...

... and they're off

This was our view while waiting for the runners to come by at an early stage in the race

zoomed in view...

change of aperture...

Here she is getting ready to pass someone

After she passed by us, we moved to a slight less picturesque location (we obviously weren't there for the scenery 😆)

Almost done...

She passed a couple more runners at the very end and called it a day, er meet. 

From the camera roll on my cell phone: 

This was fun to see when we checked the official website... We´d never won a race before because Centerville and/or  Beavercreek always beat us in conference meets. 

 

We had to purchase tickets to go to the race and they had to be purchased at least a day before the race. 

Autumn in rural Ohio- this guy was going a whopping 4 miles per hour. Thankfully, I got behind him when we were about .4 miles from our destination.