Smiley Invitational
There was something a little strange about our bus ride to the 2nd annual “Junior Smiley” invite at Horace Mann Middle School on Thursday. We had 55 seventh and eighth graders on the bus, and outside of the sound of wind whipping through open bus windows it was almost completely quiet. A few of our hyper little guys twisted and bounced in their seats but most just sat still, facing forward, listening to music, doing homework, or reading books. I don’t mean that they were all perfectly well behaved, but I’ve been on a lot of junior high busses and this was unusual. Our guys were about as serious as a bunch of 12 and 13 year olds can bewhen you jam them on a hot, crowded bus at the end of a school day. They seemed like they were ready to race and as it turned out, they were.
The course at Horace Mann is not quite as hilly as our Standing Rocks course but the ground is pretty uneven, bumpy, and uncomfortably sloped in some places. Add to that the fact that at 85degrees it was one of the hottest days of the summer, and the result was many of our guys ran about 10 to 20 seconds slower than they did 5 days earlier. Scharbarth and Jacobs took control right from the gun, hit the mile in 5:29, and as usual fought it out for the individualtitle in the last quarter mile. K. Franz and Boettcher raced well against a very good runner from Medford to claim 4th and 5th while Streveler and Williams both out-kicked a Marshfield runner to give us 6 of the top 7 spots and a very impressive score of 18 points. Boettcher, Streveler, Lepak, Bluer, Augillera, Collins, and Cuff all managed to run faster than they did last week while Hinchie, Omernik, Abush, Leonard, Bushmaker, Hefferan, Herman, Symonds, Suresh, Earnest, Edrick, Ketchum, Hoffman, and Debotwere all within about 10 seconds which was not easy to do on a day like today.
At the end of the meet our guys collected a team trophy which they all signed with a silver sharpie and we headed to Culvers for what is often referred to as “fast food.” Unfortunately orders were fouled up to the point that some guys had to wait for almost a full hour to get food. It would have been a disaster, but in the end many of our guys ended up getting free meals and the chance to watch a very angry lady use some “colorful language” while demanding a full refund from some poor high school girl behind the counter. It was an uncomfortable exchange to witnessbut as you might imagine, our young runners found it to be greatly amusing and just another fun part of a very good road trip.
Conditions were excellent for the high school version of the Smiley on Saturday morning. Temperatures were in the mid 70s’, it was overcast, and the course was very dry which is a rarity at this meet. Today marked the 61st running of this meet which is named after former Wausau East coach Bill Smiley. It’s one of the oldest invitationals in the state and with 60 teams it’s one of the largest. The course is generally thought of as difficult and the meet usually provides some pretty good team competition like Sun Prairie, Lakeland,and Eau Claire Memorial. This year we also expected teams with very good front runners and a Marshfield team that had been close to us at our home meet. That said, today wasn’t about any of those teams, today was a day for our guys to focus on running a smart, competitive race and showing improvement. We’d had our best week of practice and our guys seemed healthy, focused, and ready to go, but after our poor showing last week I wasn’t sure what to expect.
With 171 runners in the varsity race the first turn can be a little difficult on this course. Most of the good teams and individuals choose to go right to the front of the race while most of our guys ran more cautiously. Hyland put himself in the top 25 off the start but the rest of our guys were pretty well buried in the pack. Had the meet been scored at the mile mark Sun Prairie would have won easily and we would have been at least 200 point back in 5th, 6th or even worse. It’s an ugly way to race and a little puzzling to watch, but it’s worked for us in the past and it worked pretty well for us today. Hyland moved up well in mile two, looked strong, and finished well to grab a top 5 spot. C. Franz finally had the breakout race we’ve been expecting with his top 10 finish. He reminds me a lot of some of our other broad shouldered runners like Gary Anderson, Ben Schneeberger, Riley Ruzek, a kid named Solinsky, and a little like Seahawk running back Marshawn Lynch in beast mode.Sernau, Strojny, Belson, and Meixner all did very well to move up through a crowded field to finish in the top 30 while Rozek and Ceplina ran their best races of the season as well.
Today we had a very good team effort on our way to our 27th Smiley team title. Our guys ran well and learned that we are a better team than we showedlast week. We learned that our guys can race well after a tough week of practice, and that we can run from behind and finish strong. Our guys ran some very good times, but so did almost everyone else at the meet. Maybe it was the good weather, the dry, solid footing, or the fact that the course had smoother turns and fewer tough hills than in past years. I was told that the course is accurate but when almost every runner posts a P.R. I have to wonder. Last year in the DI,II, and III races only 11 runners went sub 17 minutes and today there were 52, meaning it is either a course length issue, an example how times are affected by weather and course conditions, or perhaps both. Too often we put a greater value on time than on point totals and head-to-head competition. In the end I can only say that we became a better team today and we’ll gather more information next week when we travel to the Manitowoc Invite.
The J.V. race was interesting and somewhat horrifying to watch. We have always encouraged our guys to go out conservatively, but this was the most extreme example I’ve ever seen in my 41 years of coaching and 50 years of attending cross country meets. Flatoff was in the top 20 from early on but I seriously don’t think we had another guy in the top 200 at the half-mile mark. Things were a little better at the mile, but I’m pretty sure that we were not in the top 10 teams and Madison Memorial probably had us beat by 500 points, maybe even more. I give our guys a lot of credit for making it a very close race in the end, but we put ourselves in a very bad position early on and made things much more difficult that they should have been. Flatoff ran a great race to win by a wide margin and earn a varsity spot for next week. Brogan bounced back very well after a bad race last week. Richmond took a huge step forward with an outstanding race after a slow start to his season and Manthey had an amazing last 2 miles after Kevin reminded him that the race had started. Kvatek, Sobzcak, and Lepak all fought hard to be our 5th runner and win the battle with Madison Memorial, but in the end it was Kozisek who ran the best race of his career to bring us within a point of the team title with a big kick that was fun to watch. Others who ran well include: Falkavage, G,Gundo, Jakusz, President Johnson, Rose, and Tracy who took 2 minutes off his PR. Siegel, Soik, and Benji Wolf all went sub 20 for the first time and Ethan “Crocket” Massey just missed joining the under 20 minute club. In the end I feel as if we had a good chance to beat the Memorial JV’s (coached by former SPASH runner and Kevin Hopp’s brother Casey) but our guys made a tactical error which proved to be costly. It’s unfortunate, but this is why JV races are such valuable learning experiences for our young runners.