September 3, 2010
After falling short of a team score by 1 girl last week at the Lake Region Invitational finishing the race with a full team was our primary goal today. Mission accomplished – The NYA Girls Cross Country team finished 3rd out of 4 teams at Cape Elizabeth on Friday in their first Western Maine Conference regular season meet of the season. The extreme heat this week leading up to the meet made for some challenging training and recovery yet the team was able to keep it together until Friday and were rewarded with the coolest day of the week for the race.
NYA faced some of the strongest competition they will see all season in Cape Elizabeth and Falmouth. From the start the sheer numbers of the other teams (61 girls finished the race) were intimidating and the girls started out towards the back of the pack. The Cape course is made up of several loops and each time the girls came out of the woods they had paced a few more runners finally working their way up to some considerable improvements over their race here last year.
Hillary Detert was the top finisher for NYA (11th) on the day finishing the flat, fast 3 mile course in 21:59. The most impressive improvement of the day was by Sarah Jordan who crossed the line 2nd for NYA in 22:26 good for 14th and over a 2 minute and 30 second improvement over her time on the same course last year. Next up was Maggie Meixell (19th) who finished the race in 23:04 followed by Morgan Scully (30th) in 24:25 and rounding out our top 5 was Hadley Gibson (43rd) in 26:41.
Until one or two of the injured reserve is able to race, each week will be a challenge as the girls try to balance staying healthy so that we can race as a team and pushing their limits so that our team can improve. At these races it is more important for us to have 5 girls cross the finish line then to have 3 girls finish 1-2-3. Without 5 across the line our team will not get a score which is the heart of cross country. Have a relaxing long weekend I will see everyone in at Convocation on Tuesday morning.