Whitewater X Country 2021

I've got four girls out for cross country this season; Shelbi Labrie, Ava Hanley, Kendra Cummings, and Sammie Wisher.  Three of these girls are veterans with Shelbi being our newest addition. 

We've had three solid weeks of practice and attended the Poplar Invitational this previous weekend.  

We went into the meet with the mindset of slowing ourselves down in order to balance out our split times.  One of the hardest things to do as a runner is to be disciplined enough to SLOW down in order to cut time.  The girls get out on that first mile, feeling great, so they up their tempo thinking they can sustain it for the remaining two miles.  So, our biggest focus was on slowing that first mile down and falling into a good groove. 

In Poplar, the first mile goes by and I'm looking at the girl's splits, shaking my head and laughing a little bit.  Everyone is over by at least 30 seconds, some by 2 minutes!  But, we all made it to the end of the race with four state qualifiers.  

Sammie Wisher ended in 6th place with a time of 22.11, breaking her previous PR from last season by almost 2 minutes.  This runner did quite a bit of summer training on her own and it definitely paid off. 

Poplar was Shelbi LaBrie's first meet of her CC career, she came out a little hot on the start.  That first race is always a hard one, not knowing how to find a balance for an entire 3 miles.  But, she ended in 16th place with a solid time of 24.17.  I'm very excited to see how she progresses through the year.  

Kendra Cummings, another runner who worked during the off-season to prepare for this year, ended in 29th place with a time of 26.34, a little over 30 seconds shy of her PR from last year.  I have no doubt she will be passing that time up within the next two weeks.  

Ava Hanley, another veteran, took 43rd place with a time of 27.59, beating her previous PR by about 12 seconds.  Ava was very set on beating her time when the meet started and stuck to her race plan like glue.  

All four girls have high expectations for this season, and maybe even higher now that they have competed so well at their first meet.  I'm very fortunate to have such hard workers. 

They've been getting up for 5:30 AM practices.  Secretly, I think they enjoy it. 

We're all excited to see what this season brings, and we got a good taste of it this weekend in Poplar.