News

60th Annual Hancock XC Invitational
Saturday, October 15, 2022 - Jefferson Barracks Park

** Click here for the Hancock Team Split Sheet, Results, Photos, & Video **

For the second season in a row, SLUH is champion of the long-running Hancock XC Invitational. With all the large large public schools in St. Louis not at Hancock due to their own conference meets, we suspected we'd have a good chance to repeat as champions, but the final tallies were even more staggering than we expected. Placing all five scoring runners in the top 12 overall, in a meet of 167 runners and 28 teams represented, we scored a very low number of 33 points to take the championship. The second place team, Alton (Illinois), didn't have their first finisher until after our scoring five were safely in the chute. George Donahue ran a confident race for third overall, nearly eclipsing 17:00 on a modified course at Jefferson Barracks. Brendan Jones and Alex Bendaña were only a few seconds behind George, finishing in 5th and 6th. Gus Talleur and Noah Evers completed our winning score, running in 8th and 12th place respectively. We were also thrilled to welcome the return of Mason Scargall in this race, running a fine first race after a long layoff and earning his first varsity medal.

For the second meet in a row, the Junior Varsity earned a perfect score of 15. Lacking a freshman division, the frosh had the chance to mix in with their upperclassmen teammates. They more than held their own against their teammates and older runners from other schools. Junior Matthew Musial was at the front of a string of SLUH runners in a fast first mile, coming through at a time only slightly behind where our varsity runners were at the mile. In the final part of the race, Matthew and sophomore Logan Phillips had a thrilling duel, with Matthew earning the win in a photo finish. It was a fantastic race, with each going under 18 minutes. Junior Lucas Strohmeyer was our third scorer, and freshman Nick Ahlheim PR'd and scored for the team as our fourth finisher. Senior Joel Miller ran the race of his career to be our final scorer and run a nice PR in the process. There were many more fine races and PRs in this race (listed below), but none as substantial as Titus Zeigler, who nearly shaved off three minutes from his previous PR... despite already PR'ing by more than a minute each time in each of his previous three races! Amazing work by Titus and the entire JV team, including a great return to racing after injury from Charlie Dougherty. Despite there being no official team award in the JV division, it was quite an impressive show on a beautiful autumn morning at Jefferson Barracks.

Also, a shout-out goes to Mrs. Schmidt and Mr. Roseberry for some good work on Saturday racing in the community race at the start of the day. Kudos to you both!

For anyone ending their season at Findley, there are two races left. For those athletes, we'll be doing a final speed sharpening workout this week. With a little good luck on the weather front, and more good focus and effort, hopefully that will translate to a speedy conclusion of a full season of hard work.

HANCOCK TEAM RESULTS:

• Varsity - 1st of 28 teams,167 finishers (2nd consecutive Hancock championship)
  • All 5 scoring runners medalled and finished in the top 12 overall; six medalists in total
  • Mason Scargall returned to racing and earned a varsity medal in 17th
  • Scoring spread: 0:34
  • Average time: 17:13
  • Senior captain Brendan Jones ran a :05 PR - for 5th place overall!
  • Winning score of 33 was well ahead of second place (117 points)
    
• Junior Varsity - 1st of 10 teams, 125 finishers (2nd consecutive Hancock JV championship)
  • Hancock JV Champion: Matthew Musial, 17:58 - his first-ever race win
  • 12 of 15 possible medalists, including the first 11 in the race
  • Scoring spread: 0:25
  • Average time: 18:10
  • 35 PRs:
    • Titus Zeigler (2:55), Lorenzo Gutting (1:36), Alex Juan (1:23), Vedaant Sreedharan (1:07), Colton Eikermann (1:05), Will Martin (1:01), Joshua Schmidt (:45), Madhavan Anbukumar (:43), Luke Jarboe (:42), Preston Eash (:36), Joseph Nowak (:33), Brady Vogt (:32), Jesse Toland (:27), Fin Roseberry (:25), Patrick Byrne (:24), Simon Apprill-Sokol (:21), Gabe Chambers (:21), Ben Bundschuh (:20), Hendrix Fyvie (:19), Joel Miller (:18), Sam Riggan (:18), Luke McIntyre (:17), Ethan Pogue (:16), Tommy Sullivan (:15), Tristan Kujawa (:11), Clark Davis (:10), Matthew Musial (:09), Garrett Franks (:08), Connor Kane (:07), Ryan Wingerter (:06), Nick Ahlheim (:05), Christian Vander Pluym (:02), Quinn Apprill-Sokol (:01), Ben Schneider (:01)
  • 4 SBs:
    • Cody Cox, Connor Coolbaugh, Charlie Nolan, Rudy Reitenbach