Athlete of the Week - Clara Grandt

Live from sunny Costa Rica, it´s Athlete of the Week! We don´t have access to pictures today, so this will be a bit rough. The AotW for November 23rd to November 29th is Clara Grandt. Clara finished 14th at the NCAA Championships in Terra Huate, Indiana. Ms. Grandt capped off her final year of cross country with her best performance ever at NCAAs. She, as well as Marie Louise Asselin and Keri Bland, won an All America Award for her efforts. Best of luck to her as she moves on from collegiate cross country. Also, congrats to Coach Cleary for his 6th place team. This was the greatest three year stretch of any WVU nonrifle team in the past several decades. Take a minute and pat yourself on the back. Ok, now reload and do it again, haha...

Special tip of the cap to all those who went down to Foot Locker Nationals. Alex Dent was clearly the story coming out of the race with her 1814. Congrats to her... now, I´m off to the beach.

Athlete of the Week - Karly Hamric

The AotW for November 16th-22nd is Karly Hamric. Karly earns her award by placing 15th at ECACs over the weekend, helping lead her team to a fifth place finish. Ms. Hamric is a red-shirt senior and this was her final cross country race as a Mountaineer. Karly is a Preston County native and will now be turning her attention to her final track season. Best of luck.

Tip of the cap to all those who went to BoP, and good luck to all those running at Foot Locker South this Saturday.

Athlete of the Week - Clara Grandt

The AotW for Nov. 9th - 15th is Clara Grandt. Clara earns her 8th (!) AotW via her 8th place performance at Regionals over the weekend. Ms. Grandt led the Mountaineers to a third place finish, which allowed them into nationals on at-large points. The Mid-Atlantic region was the hardest women's region in the nation (five teams qualified) and Clara made a fine showing. Other performances of note were Marie-Louise (13th), Keri Bland (18th), Kate Harrison (19th) and Ahna Lews (24th) in the girl's race, and Matt Schiffbauer (25th) in the guy's race. Nice job everyone, now it's on to nationals for WVU girls...

Athlete of the Week - Sarah Campanelli

The AotW for Nov. 2nd to Nov. 8th is Sarah Campanelli of Wheeling Jesuit. Ms. Campanelli finished 11th at the Division II Mid-Atlantic Regional with a 6K time of 22:04 (nipping A-B's Ashley Teets by 9 seconds). This was a solid run that landed her just outside of the qualifiers for nationals. She is a junior, so she'll have one more shot at nationals next year. This ended the cross country season for the WVIAC so now it's off into indoors. Best of luck to everyone.

Athlete of the Week - Clara Grandt

The AotW for Oct. 26 - Nov. 1st (apologies for the tardiness) is Clara Grandt. Clara finished 5th at the Big East Championships in Wisconsin. She finised the 6K course in a time of 21:20. Kudos to Clara for finishing off her final Big East meet in fashion. She's starting her 5th and final year as a Mountaineer on the right path. Best of luck to her at Nationals.
Tip 'o the cap to the high school kids. Tough conditions and some strong performances, well done.

Halloween '09 Recap

Three hours, seven races, one pretty intense Halloween. Happy Dia de los Muertes, now let's get down to a righteous recap.

Big East -

5 Clara Grandt SR 21:20

7 Marie Louise Asselin SR 21:26

13 Keri Bland SR 21:46

21 Kate Harrison JR 22:00

28 Kaylyn Christopher JR 22:19

( 30) Jessica O'Connell JR 22:20

( 35) Maria Dalzot JR 22:27

Team Score:

Villanova 30 pts

WVU 74 pts

Well, that wasn't exactly the team goal. With Sarah-Anne Brault out, the road to a title got a little more rough, but this was a pretty suprising result. The course was reportedly in very bad shape, hopefully this will be the low-point of the season.

Conference USA -

9 Matthew Schiffbauer 25:08

23 Chris Cole 26:15

29 Joshua Feather 26:33

30 Eric Frohnapel 26:37

32 David Caldwell 26:39

41 Cory Hampshirt 27:03 (ECU)

47 Peter Starnes 27:27

49 Alex Zurbuch 27:40

50 Adam Frohnapfel 28:11

Team - 4th

Well, it wasn't much of a year-over-year improvement for the Marshall team, but they held their own and Chris Cole certainly had a very good race. Schiffy just missed out on First Team All-Conference, but it was a very solid race considering the competition. I think they're going to have a great Regionals if everyone comes to play. (The Marshall girls were last.)

The West Virginia State Meet -

First off, great job putting on the meet by the Midland folks. I'm not sure how people could complain, especially the fans. The fact that they had their gym open so that the fans did not drown outside made them heroes in my book. The course was in average shape (the starting area was really torn to shreds, but the rest of the course was in better-than-predicted condition). The fans were in a more jovial mood than GEICO and I think everyone had a pretty good time.

Hats off to all the winners. It's not an easy thing to do (your author still rues the fact that he let his titles slip away) and you ought to be very, very proud. We'll start with AAA Boys.

Brandon Doughty executed one heck of a race. After track '09, it was apparent that if you were going to beat Brandon Doughty, you had better run away from him early because he can close. Well, he closed at Cabell Midland. He marked his targets, he didn't waste energy (more on that later) and when he made his move, he made it with aggression. It was a beautiful thing.

Others that deserve mention: Logan Wojcik put together a great race, I was really impressed with his ability to run away from his chase pack (I was not impressed when he called me "sir" after the race... I'm still young, dammit.) Tyler Salmons, every year someone always comes out of left-field and takes his All-State award, nice job. Andy Bailey is going to run very, very fast this spring. Cabell Midland had not won States in four years... they may not lose States over the next four years.

AAA Girls

Alex Dent made me (and the rest of the state) look dumb. I watched '09 AAA girls 1600 and 3200 and the 2009 GEICO meet. I bought into the whole, "It doesn't matter how illogical it is, Alex Dent is going to always go out too hard and fade the second half." Well, she fooled everyone. I don't know if it was strategy, but she ran a fool-proof tactical race. She knew that everyone (I must have heard 15 people up on the hill remark, "Don't worry about her, she'll fade" when Dent was starting to run away) thought she was going to fade. So, she goes out at a very reasonable pace, then leaks away a little after the 800m mark. Everyone lets her go, without realizing that SHE DIDN'T GO OUT TOO HARD, SHE WENT OUT WITH YOU! She stayed relaxed the whole race and no one ever challenged her. It was a terrific thing to see. Like Doughty, she picked her spot and executed her race.

Others of mention: Chelsea Clark ran like a tank, running away from three others for second. Jordon Thorton is really, really good and has gotten much better as the year has gone on. What a way for Jefferson to win the state title. They came, they saw, they conquered. Having three All-State runners is going to win you a title the vast majority of the time.

AA-A

I couldn't stay for AA-A, but from the results, I can give out a tip o' the cap to Grafton on the boys side. Any time you can win the team title by 40+ and win the individual title, you've had a really, really good day. Also, fantastic job by Maggie Drazba and St. Mary's in winning an ultra-competitive girls' race. The spread from 1st to 4th in the team race was only eight points and 2nd to 4th was only two points!

This was certainly a trend-busting State Championship. A southern girls individual AAA winner, an eastern panhandle AAA girls team champ and boys individual AAA winner, and a AA-A boys team winner who'd never won a boy's title. The only dynasty that didn't take a hit was the Cabell Midland boys, who dominated (and that's not a strong enough word) the state.

Great job by everyone and now the countdown begins to BoP and Foot Locker, good luck.