MBA JS XC Repents

We never should have let the 7th graders go to Camp Laney. The vibes were already wonky without the "sevvies" at practice yesterday. Today, without the youthful vitality that they bring to the team, something was just off. MBA (together with HH) played host for the meet at Vaughn's Creek. The park police made the first mistake of the day by inventing an imaginary parking lot (more on that later). Next, possibly still rattled/inspired by last week's lack of course markings, Coach Reynolds brought only half the flags necessary to mark the finishing chute (but that wouldn't be his worst mistake of the day). Luckily, Coach Paolicchi caught the error in time to get additional flags in place before the girls' race began. Inexplicably, even as the coach of a boys' team, Coach Reynolds still managed to mess up the girls' race. (He's too ashamed to discuss his mistake in writing, but he'll tell you in person.) He didn't mess it up quite as badly as the real cars from the imaginary parking lot who mistook the finishing stretch of the racecourse for a newly added lane of HWY 100 and nearly flattened several Honey Bears. Overeager to get in on the mistake making action and with their coach still hanging his head in shame after his own unmentionable error, the MBA squad started their warm up a full 10 minutes early. Would things ever go right today? Someone's heartfelt apology and the start of the boys' race put the Big Red on the road to redemption. Leaping off the line, the 8th graders ran to represent MBA and their missing sevvy teammates as best they could. Without having his normal USN Tiger to hunt, Wyatt Selph had to run the race entirely by himself. Undaunted by this much harder task, he recorded a PR of 11:44 and handily won 1st place overall. Carl and William King ran so hard that their poor shoes questioned their life choices. Carl, who later dropped his shoes in a trash can on the way to his car, narrowly edged his brother for 2nd place, but it was as close to a tie as you can get in a cross country race. Luke Savoie, who's apparently still saving his true speed for a spectacular season finale, claimed 5th overall. With one of the bigger improvements of the day, Jonathan Lucas ran 25 seconds faster than last week for 6th place to close out our scoring top five. William Menge can claim what might be the biggest one week improvement in the history of MBA cross country as he axed 1 minute and 10 seconds from his time last week. Joseph Oluwole and Hudson Ewald also chopped nearly a minute off their own times from last week. Unless the scorekeepers made a mistake, the Big Red took 7 of the top 10 spots and the overall win with a score of 17.