Josh Noriega continued his stellar season by winning the individual title at the Salida Invitational. Photo by Alan Versaw.
You must understand that my roots are in small schools. My high school graduating class was 23 people. Most of my teaching has been in small schools. It felt good to be back at a real small school meet. It's been three years for us--almost to the day.
Don't get me wrong. Big meets are fun, too, but I had almost forgotten how much fun a small school meet can be. I had forgotten how much more relaxed these meets are. I suspect that the team members we left at home today are going to want to go next year.
The settings tend to be a little more cross countryish. Everyone on your team runs in the same race and it's not too crowded. There is little, if any, jostling on the course. You know all the coaches. If there's a river running through the course, you typically don't have to worry about washing off the effluent if you dip your feet in. The fans from the host school take the time to say how glad they are that you came. Scoring by labels on poster board.
Okay, I do prefer computer scoring to that last one...
As meet settings go, they don't get much better than the Salida Invitational, located near the base of Mount Shavano just outside of Poncha Springs. And the competition was pretty good, too. If you haven't seen Josh Noriega run yet this year, you're missing something.
Noriega kept the turnover going for 16 minutes and 9 seconds, just enough to finish 5000 meters. One left with the unmistakeable sense that he meant to win his own invitational with an exclamation point. And, he certainly did that. This was not a fast course. Long gradual climbs and slow gradual descents, one sharp climb of about 100 meters. A lot of grass. Not the stuff of flat and fast.
TCA's Josh Simkins was a distant second in 16:53.
In team scoring, TCA totaled 20 points to Salida's 31 for the meet title. TCA followed the 2 by Simkins with a 3-6-9 to complete their scoring.
For the girls, Salida's Kaiti Davis made a serious race of it for a little over a mile before TCA's Shelby Stableford broke away for the win in 19:21. Davis held on for second before TCA completed their team scoring with a 3-4-5 from Lauren Hamilton, Nicole Sassaman, and Meredith Sloan (in her first full-effort race coming back from an injury).
TCA's 13 team points put them ahead of host Salida for the girls team title as well.
And that leads us to the next item of interest--the traveling trophies. We'll have to bring the trophies back to the meet next year for the assembled teams to take their shots at bringing the trophies home with them, but they'll sit in a prominent spot in my classroom in the meantime. Since the trophies can't be adequately described to be believed, I'll post of photo here shortly. TCA is proud to have won them this time around.
In all, it was an outstanding meet put on by a set of outstanding people. Cross country needs more meets like this. You all need a meet or two like this on your schedule. It's worth the trip.