“Are We There Yet?”
Getting to Knoxville for
The 2010 Tennessee Middle School Cross Country State Championship
This year, I will take my 4th group of middle school runners to Knoxville for the Tennessee Middle School Cross Country State Championship meet. Each trip has proven a positive experience, for runners, parents, and coaches.
This is my third story about that meet. Jasen and Marty ask me to do this as they seem to think I have a “gift for gab” - they are surely correct - and, to be honest, I enjoy using words and turning a phrase, even if I could surely benefit by more schooling and practice, “coaching”, as it were.
I am late getting to it this year for many reasons. As a parent and spouse in a 2-job, 2-kid household, AND a volunteer cross county coach, time becomes a precious and extremely limited resource during the final two or three weeks of each season. (My wife, a runner herself, must have the patience of Jobe, at least until I return home from Knoxville on Sunday.) Minutes, hours, and days are constrained not only with seeking that final sharpening of our runners as we enter the home-stretch of the competition schedule, racing in League Championships, Regionals, and, hopefully, States, but also because I am one of the Co-Directors of our Regional Meet (WTMSXCRC).
Did I mention anything about lodging in Knoxville on the same day when ‘Bama visits Neyland Stadium?
I am quite certain that Jasen, Marty, Brian, Glen, and Kevin, as well as others, encounter the same lack of enough time, as well as shortness of breath on occasion.
This is not a plea for sympathy, but, rather, background or context for why I am writing in the first-person as well as the entire nature of this piece. I shared with Jason and Marty late yesterday that I had gathered a large amount of reference data, as I do each year, but that I had yet to arrive upon a theme of any sort. As such, I advised them to expect less “melodrama” than in the submissions of the previous two years.
I originally thought about that old Doris Day song, “Que Sera, Sera” as offering some sort of thematic framework for a story. I remember hearing that song on the radio when I was very young and how it made even a kindergartner-age kid ponder the words and what they might mean.
However, as I began to reflect on this last night and early this morning, I realized that the manner in which I had collected and assembled this data revealed some apparent truths about Middle School Cross Country that I had not fully appreciated until now. And, even with less melodrama, it seems to me that “whatever will be, will be”, is actually quite fitting for what my perspectives on who might and who might not crash the party in Knoxville on Saturday.
Our experiences at “States” have familiarized us with many of the “regulars”, Webb, Page, Science Hill aka “Lil’ Toppers”, Baylor, both “West’s”, View and Valley, as well as USJC, “The Wild Things”, “Big Blue Nation”, “Run For Your Life”, as well as the ever-memorable “2 Guys Running” and “I Had Coffee This Morning”. I do not know if our schools from the west are likewise recognized, whether we use either orthodox or reformed naming conventions. However, even for the teams who plan from Day 1 to make “the show”, nothing is guaranteed.
The future is not ours to see.
That is often more the case with runners and teams in the Middle School grades than with older scholastic runners, much less adults. No matter how much innate potential a kid may possess in the areas of speed or oxygen capacity, no matter how focused they may be on nailing a specific time, position, or even a victory, no matter how knowledgeable they may be about their commitment to achieving their goals, and no matter how tough they may be in the actual execution of their training and racing, it’s still Middle School, and they are subject to the realities and unealities of their age.
Each and every one of them depend on “mom and dad” to get them to the line on time. Then, of course, there are those other “distractions” from running, a football game, cheerleading, soccer, ensemble, choir, the school play, and, oh yes, Junior High dances. The contention for the resources of time and energy of many of our middle school runners can be so great that it is often not a surprise at all when a team member, or even an entire team, is represented by an empty start-box. That these kids get to the line at all, much less get away from it, then close for ever-faster times at the finish is as much credit to their youth as it is to their coaches for helping them pogress as well as their parents for simply driving them to practice.
In other words, makin’ it to an open, unclassified STATE CHAMPIONSHIP, ought to be a big deal. That’s because it IS A BIG DEAL.
It seems that almost the entire list of qualifiers for this year’s Tennessee State entries view it in similar fashion. This year, of the 50 possible team qualifiers, Top 5 Teams from 5 different regions for both girls and boys, barely a handful won’t be toeing the line.
That field and a scan of the numbers means it’s gonna’ be ONE HECKUVA’ SHOW!
In the ladies main event, there appear to be 5 main contenders. For the first time, we have 5 girls’ teams coming out of their respective regions with their Top 5 runners notching average times UNDER 14:00.
St. Agnes Academy (WEST), 2008 State Champions, with a youth-heavy 2010 edition, finds itself back in this unofficial, pre-State Top 5, having dominated a resurgent Houston squad at their Regionals. (Okay, full disclosure, these are “my” girls. Houston did run well, but we had a good tight string of blue into the chute on race-day.) Next up are the ladies from Baylor (CHATTANOOGA), running 1-2-3-6-11, unadjusted, at their Regionals. That is high-and-tight. Just 0.9 seconds up is St. Matthews (MIDDLE), who finished second at their Regionals to Regional Champions, Page. There is only a 20 second time span across these 4 squads average times.
Then there is West View.
The numbers show a gap between these ladies in red, black, and white, and the next 4 teams, with West View’s average time from the Tri-Cities Regionals (Trailblazer) at 13:09, by my reckoning. Some may ask, “What about that 12:46 team average they posted at Trailblazer?” Well, hold your horses, there, partner. Impressive, yes, but it has been reported as having elapsed over a course that was 1.95M, rather than 2.0M. That is nothing to argue about though. Even with a reasonable adjustment to attempt an apples-to-apples comparison, these ladies, the defending State Champions from 2009, appear to be the favorites going into Saturday’s race.
On the boys’ side, things are even more impressive. There are a dozen teams who posted average times under 13:00 minutes at their Regionals. Amazingly enough, it’s the fella’s from West View who, like their running sisters, appear to be the team to beat. That also includes a reasonable adjustment, which puts them at about 12:09 over a full 2 miles and also gaps them a bit from the next 11 teams.
Those 11 will be in a dogfight; the entire pack fits under a 42-second “blanket”. They are, ranked in order of average team times at their respective Regionals:
∙ Big Blue Nation, aka Robinsonville (TRI-CITIES)
∙ University School - Johnson City (TRI-CITIES)
∙ Webb (KNOXVILLE)
∙ Baylor (CHATTANOOGA)
∙ Grace-St. Luke’s (WEST)
∙ Central (MIDDLE)
∙ St. Francis (WEST)
∙ West Valley (KNOXVILLE)
∙ Farragut (KNOXVILLE)
∙ St. Rose (MIDDLE)
∙ Blackman (MIDDLE)
As good and competitive as the girls’ races have been in previous years, the “Best In Show” for 2010 may well be the boys’ championship race.
Now, any XC coach, runner, or fan knows that courses and conditions can vary, which impacts the times. A study of the numbers also reveals that an aveage time for any given team’s Top 5 is not at all proof of where a team actually finishes; one or two individual front-runners on a squad can drop the team’s average time tremendously. However, it is just as typical for another team’s hangin’-tough 4 and 5 runners to hold on to the end of that string and seal the deal for them and their mates, no matter about a slower average time. No matte how impressive some of these times may be, the bottom line is that winning in XC is not about which team has runners who can, quite literally, run faster that other runners, but about which runners can finish as a TEAM.
In other words, “what will be, will be”.
So, no matter the tunes that may be playing on the ride up, “Que Sera, Sera” or “Born to Run” or whatever, understanding something more about how we all got there could enrich the meaning of that oft-repeated by never quite worn-out phrase, “Are we there yet?”
CU Saturday.