On Wednesday, we went once again to Burke Lake Park for our Conference Championship Meet and what an amazing performance in our last meet with the entire team!   The *average* time drop for all our runners from the previous race at Burke Lake in October was over a minute and a half! (97.8 seconds, to be exact!)   This is a testament to all the hard work and many long runs, hill repeats and quarters that you have done.  Coach Gross estimated that you all have put in at least 350-400 miles since the start of the season!   

Leading the way with biggest time drops were, for Middle School runners, John Paul with a drop of almost 6 minutes and Chiara with a drop of 4:27.  For the high schoolers, Noah (4:29), Ben (4:03) and Andrew (2:59) had the biggest drops for the boys, while Colette (2:20) and Cora (1:32) had the biggest improvements for the girls.  Among the notable improvements for the varsity runners were: Dan (2:22), Patrick K (1:34), Monica (1:21) and Max (1:12).  Also dropping by more than a minute were Lily, Penny, Nick, Gabriel and Robert.  We had an astounding 27 Personal Best times set on Wednesday!

Michael Brand earned All-Conference honors, placing 10th with a team best time of 17:16.31.  Following close behind were Jerome Kramer (18th) and Dan Jackson (22nd), with all three of those under 18 minutes.  That is the first time we have had 3 runners under 18 in a VCAC conference meet.  Rose Waldron was the top Seton girl, placing 15th with a time of 21:29.70, followed by Lily Griffin and Penny Kramer.  Patrick Kay had an exceptional race, dropping a minute and a half from his previous PR to finish as the seventh Seton runner, earning the final spot on the VISAA State meet team.  Peter Russo was recognized as a top finisher for the Middle School race, finishing 12th with a time of 22:45.20.  

Here is the link to the milestat results, and a summary of the statistics:

https://va.milesplit.com/meets/579208-vcac-championship-2023/results

The team for the VISAA state meet was finalized after the meet, as Patrick K earned the final spot on the boys team.  We were blessed with a wealth of fast runners this year, with every one of our active high school runners meeting the minimum time thresholds of 25 minutes for boys and 30 minutes for girls.  We are restricted to only 10 runners per gender for the state meet, though, and competition for those ten spots on the boys team was very intense.  In the end, we are taking a team of ten runners, nine of whom have personal best times under 20 minutes, with 6 of those under 19 minutes and 3 of those under 18 minutes!  This is probably the deepest team that we have ever sent to the state meet.

Here are the runners who will represent Seton School at the 2023 VISAA Cross Country State Championship:

Girls:

Boys:

To all the athletes, I thank you for letting me be part of your season and congratulate you all for your efforts, endurance and accomplishments!

Coach Konstanty