The final weekend of August is in the books and while the meets were limited and the weather brutal there are still some key takeaways from the competitions that persevered through the high heat indexes.
Macon Bank Invitational
Macon County Results
One of our preseason runners to watch was Cookeville's Katie Hetzel and during her feature interview she noted that her goal for this year was "low 18's and possibly under 18" which with a 19:20 as her best coming into the season, would require a significant year over year improvement. After Saturday, that doesn't seem that far out of the realm of possibility. Hetzel won the varsity race in Lafayette opening her season with a new PR of 18:45. This time is just 9 seconds off of former Cookeville Cavalier Landri Wilcox's best on this course of 18:36 which she also ran her junior season. Wilcox went on to break 18:00 three times that season, place top five at state, AND qualify for Foot Locker. Obviously I don't want to get too far ahead of myself but it's a strong start over a formidable opponent in Rockvale's Leila Hailey who finished runner up in 19:22.
Green Hill Invitational
Results | Photos | Videos
The Green Hill girls came into the season ranked #7 overall in the MileSplit TN Preseason Coach's Poll and have lived up to their ranking in their first two outings of the season. They placed 6th at Saturday Light Fever in a strong field of other Top 10 teams and with a similar performance, won their home meet on Saturday scoring just 21 points. Sophomore Morgan Bissonnette and Junior Caroline Irvin (above) swept top honors flipping their finishing order from the previous week. For the second week in a row, the remaining scoring runners crossed the finish line less than a minute after the leader. Their team spread in back to back weeks has been 42 and 48 seconds. With this type of pack running mentality the team has a very high floor and looks to be in contention for a top five finish in Class AAA this season which would be an improvement on their 13th place finish a year ago. With only one senior in the top five, I feel like we'll be talking about them more and more over the next two seasons.
Run For The Hills
Results | Photo Albums
Run For The Hills on a yearly basis is the slowest running course in the state. In it's history, only one boy has every run under 16 minutes at South Holston Dam and that was Conner Wingfield (Formerly of Daniel Boone, now runs at Colorado) who just barely set the record in 2021 with a 15:58. Combine that with the heat index of Saturday and it's hard to draw any conclusions holistically from the times from this meet but one thing that did don on me is that with David Crockett moving down to Class AA/A, there will be little deviation with which three teams are going to qualify from Region 1 Class AAA. In years past, it was any permutation four teams with Dobyns-Bennett, Science Hill, Daniel Boone, and David Crockett that could place top three and advance but now, while I may not write it in stone, I'd feel pretty comfortable predicting that Dobyns-Bennett, Science Hill, and Daniel Boone will be the representatives from this Region for the next two seasons. The real slugfest for qualifying now shifts to Class AA/A where teams like David Crockett, Tennessee, Elizabethton, Gatlinburg-Pittman, and Sullivan East, etc... will now have to slug it out for three qualifying spots making it one of the deepest qualifying regions regardless of classification.