2010 Season

[06Raider]

The first day of practice for the 2010 XC season was yesterday. Any early predictions on the season, especially from PD folks? Any news on coaching changes would be welcome...I know David Baer is no longer at Menchville.

[Fan4All]

High school XC is a strange, strange sport. For the uninitiated, you cannot look at the results of weekly mid-week meets to determine who is the better team. The reason for that is some teams will not run their best kids mid-week in these straight-up competitions.

These teams have a calculated training regimen that focuses rather on the Invitational meets (Chancellor Invitational, Newport News Invitational, Maymont Invitational, etc.) held on week-ends where hundreds of runners representing dozens of teams gather to compete.

So, you can't look at how Grafton did against Jamestown mid-week this week...because it's likely that Jamestown (as they have done each year), rests their best runners as they prepare to peak at the week-end invitational meet (William&Mary Invitational).

Please don't get me wrong, I'm not saying it's a bad thing here...because Jamestown excels at the Invitational meets and they do very, very well at the end-of year district meet, the regional meet, and at states.

You can follow teams and their best runners at milestat.com where all of the results from the invitational meets are maintained.

Peace!
:peace: