Early in the race Bryce Gregoire (center) had to wait for the excess energy of a few usurpers to burn off. Once that happened, he took over and never looked back. All photos by Alan Versaw.
This is the meet that froze everyone out last year. Freezing rain, a driving wind, and fog made life, well, miserable. Runners finished the race with accumulations of ice in their hair. Uniform rules were relaxed beyond recognition and runners competed in all manner of hats, gloves, and underlayers. Conditions, though still a bit short of perfect, were a couple of orders of magnitude more favorable this time around.
The course ran a little slow due, at least in part, to the fact that it had been recently dragged. The dragging operation left very level footing for the runners, but also left a very soft surface that slowed the pace of the races. Such is the nature of cross country. If we ran it on a level, synthetic surface of uniform firmness, we'd call it track.
Bryce Gregoire.
Slower pace or not, Bryce Gregoire made the most of it. Taking over at about one-half mile after the early leaders had spent their energy, Gregoire made winning his home invitational look easy, winning in 17:30. Unfortunately, his team wasn't quite able to follow his lead, missing the meet title by a margin of 26 - 49 to The Classical Academy.
TCA put all five scoring runners in the top eight places to assure the a victory over the 10-team field. Ridgeview Academy finished third and a JV team from Chaparral claimed fourth.
Shelby Stableford
A nearly identical brief period of drama accompanied the opening half-mile of the varsity girls' race. TCA's Shelby Stableford held back off the lead until the early leader could no longer maintain her initial rate of energy expenditure. Vista Ridge's Beth Luckel held on for a while, but eventually Stableford was running solo. Stableford's winning time for the double curcuit of the grounds of Falcon HS was 20:01.
TCA captured the girls' title, scoring 1-2-6-7-9 to make it a matched set of trophies. Second place went to Vista Ridge and third to the Chaparral JV team.
Meet Results, Photos, and Video