WAUSAU EAST SMILEY INVITATIONAL
Conditions were outstanding: 60 degrees, mostly sunny, a slight wind, and dry footing. There are usually about 25 teams in the meet but today there were only 20. Antigo had an incomplete team, for some reason Pulaski only entered one runner, and 2 other teams didn’t show up.
We entered the meet as the 3rd ranked team with Everest ranked 4th. Everest had their top 6 together for the first time this season so we knew that they would be tough. Last week we ran very well to beat them by 19, today they turned the tables on us and beat us by 18. It was a tough loss as this was a meet we could have won, but we needed to race well to do it. We have won this meet 23 times and 13 of the last 17 years. Most years a good solid effort was all it took. Today we were pushed by a good team and we didn’t respond very well to the challenge. Losing a meet is not a big deal. In the end Everest went home with a slightly bigger ugly trophy than ours. The disappointment lies in the fact that we took a step backward as a team and didn’t run as well as we are capable.
We know this is a more challenging course than the one we ran at our home meet just a week ago, but it’s hard to explain how our varsity averaged 20 seconds slower. Everest ran just 5 seconds slower on average, while 4 of the teams running in our meet and Smiley ran faster averages and 4 others ran between 5 and 13 seconds slower. Clearly we didn’t race well. In a program that prides itself on consistency this performance was unusual.
Everest earned the victory with a nice race and a strong last half mile. It is the first time they have beaten us dating back to at least 1977. It is only the 9th time a team from our conference has beaten us over that span. Our record against Wisconsin Valley Conference teams stands at 1,254 wins and 9 losses.
I don’t want to be overly critical of our performance. We finished 2nd out of 20 teams and had several bright spots. As poorly as we ran, our average was only 1 second slower than last years. Our J.V.s averaged just 4 seconds slower than last week, and did so without Isaiah, (“Long baby” sprained his ankle on the Everest course) Yonash, and Chojnacki. Larson became or 18th Smiley Meet individual champion and ran the same time that Kevin did to win it ‘94. Sheibley ran well. Cruz did a terrific job of getting back into the race after a bad fall on the big downhill. Hansen responded to Cruz’s fall by running a P.R. and his best last mile ever. Weisbrod also P.R.ed with a great effort in his first varsity race.
Our J.V.s showed some good intensity in the last race of the day. We were within 7 seconds of a perfect score, and with 23 points we would have defeated the other 19 teams combined. Hatton was outstanding. With his first sub 18 minute race he earned a varsity spot and was the second best freshman at the meet. (Cruz ran 17:31). It was great to see Suehring run well again, Scott keeps improving, and The Drake had his best race ever. Others with big improvements from last week were: Martinez -58, Krutza -24, Wysocki-51, Summers -40, A.Dotti -1:48, Salweski -1:17, S. Dotti -45, Colby -1:13, Xiong -1:33, and Eron with a huge 2:14 drop from last week.
It was not the best day for our program, but I feel there was more good than bad. We are a young team with a lot to learn. We need to get better at running hills, running in a tight pack, dodging oddly placed flags (Colin), staying on our feet, and finishing our races. Despite our struggles today the varsity race was pretty close until the last quarter mile. Today can be a positive if we choose to make it one, just keep working, and keep believing.