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Fast Times at Ed White

Saturday, September 24
Arnold City Park (1 Bradley Beach Rd, Arnold, MO 63010)

Find kilometer-by-kilometer scores and places for each race at Big River's website

The team enjoyed another morning of success in the Ed White Festival of Races at Arnold City Park. Bolstered by another week of training, a flatter course, and better running conditions than experienced recently, we saw tremendous races up and down the roster. Even though we held out 16 athletes due to their travel to Chicago, everyone stepped up and took responsibility for doing their absolute best to help the team perform exceptionally well. Not everyone is going to have an "A" day, but take a look at the crazy amounts of personal records and season bests. This included PRs from ten juniors and five seniors, which is a staggering amount on any given day for our more experienced runners. These finish results were aided by many strong finishes, with athletes refusing to give up or let in until they crossed the finish line. Bravo!

The varsity, with only one of them having any varsity race experience, ran a strong race to finish second in a field with runners from 22 teams. Noah Evers led the charge for us and finished 7th, with Patrick Jones not far back in 11th. Logan Phillips battled hard over the last 1k to rise two spots and grab the final medal in 20th. It's worth noting that our varsity faced and defeated top varsity teams from all but one school - and that one school wasn't that far ahead of us! ALL SEVEN of the runners in the varsity race eclipsed our varsity-letter standard of 18:15, a time that represents what we believe would be a Top 7 Varsity mark at the overwhelming majority of schools in the area. Big congratulations to senior Nicholas Purschke and his leadership with the three juniors and three sophomores. Also of note was some above-and-beyond great leadership throughout the day by junior Matthew Musial.

In the JV "A" race, we had to designate ten runners for the race before the day started. Those ten performed exceptionally well, biding their time before surging up through the field in the middle of the race. Tyler Barks led the group early in the race, and by the end, Joel Miller and Clark Davis battled to be our top finisher. Seven of our ten runners in this race earned a medal, and the team outdistanced any challenger by 42 points to win the team title.

In the JV "B" race, the depth of our program really had the chance to shine. Andrew Moritz and Landon Beiseman took the race out hard, with a group of their teammates not far behind. In the second part of the race, senior Nathan Abner made his way up to Landon, and the two had a gritty battle to the finish. Though Landon edged him out at the finish line, it was a great result for both. Behind those two were 11 more SLUH medalists. Not to mention all the great times, many athletes earned their first-ever XC medal in this race. The team nearly perfect-scored the race, but our team score of 16 was fantastic nonetheless. Included in this race was senior and student team chaplain Alex Brinkman, who in addition to running his best race of the season, led everyone in a wonderful prayer at the conclusion of the meet. Congratulations to these runners!

Though many schools elected to run their freshmen in an earlier JV race, making the freshman race a little bit thinner than we had hoped for, that didn't stop our crew from putting on a great show. Nick Ahlheim and Jake Fitzpatrick battled with a very good Kirkwood runner, one who had gotten the best of them both by a substantial margin the week before at Paul Enke. Nick and the Kirkwood runner pulled away in the third mile, and Nick held him off in a furious sprint to the finish line. Nick and Jake were both safely under 19 minutes, and three more freshmen (Tristan Kujawa, Hendrix Fyvie, and Preston Eash) were under 20 minutes. Running under 20:00 for a 5k is a competitive benchmark for freshmen. After Ed White, we now have six freshmen under that mark, with several others knocking on the door. Take a look at the Team Honor Roll to see that list. Seven additional freshmen also medalled, and again, there were some remarkable time drops for many of the runners in this race. One fun moment of many great performances was watching Jerry Frantz and Isaac Aguayo battle each other hard to the finish.

With the hottest of weather hopefully behind us, and our increasing fitness and racing acumen, look for more good racing throughout the month of October.

TEAM RESULTS:

Varsity - 2nd of 22 teams
- Medalists: Noah Evers (7th), Patrick Jones (11th), Logan Phillips (20th)
- Six of our seven athletes made their varsity debuts in this race! And all seven earned varsity letters, due to eclipsing our 18:15 time standard. .
Junior Varsity A - 1st of 23 teams
- Medalists: Clark Davis (5th), Joel Miller (6th), Tyler Barks (11th), Rowan Lemp (13th), Joe Stoeckel (14th), Otto Reitenbach (17th), Jens Istvan (19th)
Junior Varsity B - 1st of 11 teams
- Medalists: Landon Beiseman (race champion!), Nathan Abner (2nd), Quinn Apprill-Sokol (3rd), Chase Mason (4th), Garrett Franks (6th), Ian Kuehner (7th), Connor Coolbaugh (8th), Spencer Johnson (9th), August Russell (14th), Adrian Samaniego (15th), Nico Wilson (17th), Andrew Moritz (18th)
Freshmen - 1st of 7 teams
- Medalists: Nicholas Ahlheim (race champion!), Jake Fitzpatrick (3rd), Tristan Kujawa (4th), Hendrix Fyvie (5th), Preston Eash (6th), Simon Edgell (7th), Aidan Smith (9th), Reed Shah (10th), Martin Miller (11th), Luke Seamands (13th), Ben Schneider (15th), Connor Kane (16th)
PRs and season-bests - a tremendous amount! Check the Team Split Sheet for details.