Johnston Aerials will be back to provide aerial coverage from Victor Ashe on Saturday!
Busiest Weekend Of The Season?
Between Friday and Saturday, seven meets will be hosted within Tennessee's borders making this the busiest weekend of the season by that metric. For most of September and October, weekends will be characterized by a mix of mid-sized in state meets coupled with major meets out of state which pull a lot teams to attend. Barring any unforeseen circumstances, we're going to try to have coverage from four of these meets between Friday and Saturday so be on the lookout for myself or one of our contributors this weekend. Here are some things we'll be watching for from these competitions.
- With the graduation of Zoe Marsh and Merial Rowland, there are zero girls returning this season from West Tennessee faster than 19:00. There are four that return under 19:30: Ava Lang (Collierville), Lindsey Barnes (Houston), Sadia English (Arlington), Kaley Byrd (Bartlett) They will all be racing at Memphis Twilight. Will be interested to see who emerges as the Top Tennessean on Saturday.
Memphis Twilight Full Meet Preview
- Knoxville Catholic Boys will have an opportunity to face off against another high ranking team on Saturday with Farragut at Victor Ashe. The Admirals are the back to back defending state champion in Class AAA and though they graduated quite a few pieces, should have enough depth from their middle school to keep them in the mix. Will be a great opportunity to see how the Irish race in back to back weeks and measure Farragut against Brentwood with a common opponent. I'll also be interested to see how Farragut's Evan Beeler and West's Nicholas Burke race against Radek Molchan on Saturday. My understanding is Keegan Smith will be taking the week off.
Evan Beeler finish 8th at Victor Ashe in 2023 with a 16:28.
- On Monday, Stewart's Creek's Bella King won the Coffee County Invitational with a 19:06. On Saturday she will face off with one of the top returners from a year ago in Katie Hetzel out of Cookeville at the Macon Bank Invitational. Should be a good head to matchup at a smaller meet of two all state runners.
- Anderson County's Ava Moody worst time of the season came from this meet last season but ended the year with a 3rd place finish in Class AA/A and was consistently under the 19:00 mark for most of 2023. She enters as the on paper favorite. Will be interested to see how she handles being the one that sets the pace at Victor Ashe.
- On Friday, Webb School of Bell Buckle will host the John Freeman Invitational and Dickson Christian will be in attendance. This will be an opportunity for William Hartman, one of the top returning freshman, to race on another course that's not The Hermitage. The TSIAA is exclusively hosted there so all his cross races to date have been on that course against the same competition week in and week out. He'll have some stiff competition with Rylan Selvidge of Blackman in the field who also won the Coffee County Invitational earlier last week.