The weather was nice with a slight drizzle! The course included muddy stretches of trail. This meet had many advanced opponents ranging from 1A-5A schools. There were 470 total runners, and our teams did a tremendous job!
Our Middle school girl runners, consisting of Aurora Outlaw and Karma Wilkes, also did an amazing job! Our returning runner Karma was not only able to beat her previous course time from last year, but also set a personal best time for herself; she was also in the top half of runners! This was Aurora's 2nd cross country meet, and she was able to take 5 minutes off her previous run from last week! The main personal goal of Cross Country is to ALWAYS try to beat your personal best times, and these ladies did that! When comparing your times, it is also important to compare it to "the same" course. For example, last week featured many hills, whereas this week was less hilly. Our Middle school ladies are off to a great start. There were 110 girls in the middle school girls race.
Our Middle school boys were the only group to QUALIFY as a TEAM. In order to qualify as a team, you must have at least 5 runners. The first 5 to cross for your team score your points based on finishing position, with your 6th runner being a tiebreaker. Lowest score wins. It has been many years since Irwin had a complete team of MS boys. Our boys did INCREDIBLE! Every single boy runner took off time from last week; some runners were able to take off up to 4-5 minutes! One Highlight from this race was the finish with Micah Parker. Micah came in with a group of 3 runners, who were decimal places away. He was able to extend just enough to steal the better time, which earned our team fewer points. In our other exciting highlight, BRYCE MARTIN was able to bring home another MEDAL. At the 1-mile split, Bryce was around 6th place, but along the way he overtook some runners and FINISHED THE RACE IN 2nd!!! There were 140 competitors in this race! All boys finished in the top half.
As a team, our middle school boys did well! We came in 7/10th place with a score of 171! We were one point away from Telfair County. Our Team was able to come ahead of Ben Hill, Coffee, and Wilcox (all wonderfully established programs). Teams that finished ahead include bigger schools such as Tift Co and Wayne Co. Our Middle School runners included: Bryce Martin, Parker Griner, Micah Parker, Sam Bowles, Cannon Toro, and Brantley Harris.
Great job to these teams! We will be on a break from Meets for a few weeks, but BE SURE to LINE THE STREETS on Friday afternoon to cheer on our runners as we help the Ocilla Rotary Club carry the "Game Ball" to Fitzgerald in the Annual Border Dash Bash. Our Next meet will be on Sept 19 in Turner County!
