Sensational Sectional Effort

While enjoying pizza at Monicals with the team, we discussed the results of today's Sectional and could never discount the tremendous effort put forth by everyone on the team.  I am pretty sure EVERY runner on our team posted a course PR.  That is awesome, and we should be proud of that fact.

The girls were so enthusiastic and ran extremely well.  Their complete approach was excellent and I couldn't ask for much more.  And WOW, Unity has to be state champ next week.  If not, there is something totally wrong!

To our girls team, I can't say enough about how we improved throughout the season.  Those who stayed the course continued to improve leaps and bounds.  My gosh, we're so young with this group, with only one 8th grade leader left on the squad.  Next year looks very bright for this group.  We need to convince more young ladies to give Cross Country a look.  After all, running may be work, but it is also a lot of fun on our team.

The boys did a very good job in race preparation as well.  Everything seemed to be right.  Even as we crossed the finish line I thought our team was third.  It's amazing that we had all 7 of our guys in before Edison's number 4........   That really leaves an unsettling feeling, knowing that fact.  But, scoring as it goes, didn't come out in our favor since their top three were in the top 10, while we had only one.  With Monticello, we have 5 in before they have 4, but they had high finishers too.  Unity ran lights out as a team, no doubt.  Hats off to them.

I know the guys were disappointed, as were Coach T and I.  I know looking back we know where a couple of tactical errors were made that might have been the difference, but like we said all along this week, it was going to be a 5 team horse race and we had to have a flawless effort in order to in the top 3.  OH SO CLOSE.

To our boys team, especially the 8th grade group.  You have grown so much in the last 3 years and represented PBL with Panther Pride.  I want you to accept the challenge of continued improvement at the high school level and let today's hollow feeling serve as motivation for self improvement.

With a really young squad returning, our future could be very good.  However, I will caution we WILL have to be willing to work to improve and not take anything for granted.

We'll celebrate today's effort and look forward to cheering Kody and Evie on at next week's state finals.

I am proud of my Panthers!!!