Woah. I’m not sure what else to say, but “Woah.” That was a wild XC season fam! Thank you so much to everyone who made the trip down to Edmond yesterday to support the Varsity teams at the State meet! Special thank you to Keith Nelson, who drove the spirit bus; to all the parents who decorated the fieldhouse and put together goody bags; to Kelly Yost’s class, who made letters for the runners and coaches; to all the girls who made signs and t-shirts, the alumni who showed up and celebrated with the team, and all the JV runners who got up super early to come down and cheer their faces off!
Yesterday, the boys capped their season with a 12th-place finish. One thing we always say is to “beat your ranking” at State. They were ranked 14th and finished 12th, so that was awesome! Evan Carter led the boys with a 22nd-place finish. Noah Nelson and Colton Correa were the next two to come through the line, followed quickly by Nos Graham, Brady Hugueley, Brendan Payne, and Collin Yost. These guys worked incredibly hard all season. They showed up and put the miles in and by the end, 6 of the 7 boys ran lifetime PR’s this season. That’s fantastic!
The ladies came into State ranked 2nd, having won several races this season but never beating Piedmont. We had a game plan for how we might take them down, and the girls executed the race plan to perfection! Led by Bella Nelson, who secured her second straight individual state title, Ava Cornelius, Quinn Thomason, and Lilith Johnson all finished with All-State honors! Bijoux Milien and Stella Jones worked together amazingly well throughout the race, but the performance of the day belonged to Audrey Toews, who started the race in 44th place but passed 22 runners in the final half of the race to secure the girls’ third straight State Championship and 4th in 5 years! It was a fantastic performance, with the ladies setting a school record for the fastest team time and the largest margin of victory over an outstanding Piedmont team.
Now that we are past the State meet, we will give the runners a couple of days off from the weight room and running. Tomorrow will be team meetings, games, and a time to relax and decompress, but there’s no rest for the weary! We will pick things back up on Wednesday as we prepare for NXR in a few weeks. I will talk with the athletes tomorrow about who will be racing at NXR, and then I’ll send out the roster to the parents along with an early itinerary. State is and will always be the top priority, but NXR offers our program the opportunity to continue training for a few more weeks and see how we stack up with our neighboring states. No team from OK has ever qualified from NXN. I know it will happen eventually, and I’d love to see ORXC be the first to get it done!
As the coaches talked back and forth after State, we discussed how it’s easy to think the season was all roses when you come out on top, but every season is full of ups and downs. It was months of hard work that came down to a little of thirty minutes of actual race time. It went well, but I never want to think we have everything figured out. We lost one of our best runners to a stress fracture mid-way through the season (or State would’ve really been a blowout), the boys’ team has a lot of potential, and although I am incredibly proud of our boys this season, we want to be fighting for the top spot each year, and we still had races and workouts that just did not go well. I know that’s all part of it, taking the good with the bad, but we always want to strive to be better than we were until we reach perfection. (I also know that’s impossible so it helps with job security.) It takes fantastic athletes, a ton of parent support, and even more luck to win. I am so grateful to be a part of this program, and I don’t take for granted how fortunate I am to work with such amazing kids, coaches, and parents, but I know we can be even better!
We’ll take a couple of days to celebrate, then get back to work on doing just that!
We have our annual end-of-season banquet on November 12th. The banquet is for all our athletes and their families. If you’d like to come, please RSVP here: https://www.signupgenius.com/go/60B0F4AA8A92FA1FE3-50386246-2024
Payments for the banquet can be made using the QR code attached or via Square here: https://ortrackfieldxc.square.site/
Thank you again for all you do!!! GO RAMS!!! Week Fourteen Schedule https://docs.google.com/document/d/1T6ShoROiIzkKXSMBApASPh7-BB3K5Y4aKfkEy4hq5HM/edit?usp=sharing