EARLYSVILLE– The fog and rain cleared on Saturday morning just in time for the Virginia Independent Conference Championship. The Caisson runners responded well and continued their steady personal improvement. Most recorded PR’s. The team finished 6th of 9 teams, just behind Eastern Mennonite and ahead of New Covenant School, Blue Ridge School and Hargrave. VES, on a multi-year streak, again took top honors.
Junior Aiden Bowman led the team effort with a season best time of 19:58, a thirteen second improvement over his performance at our home meet in Coyner Springs almost three weeks ago. Freshman Dietrich Larson PR’d as well, and finished just seconds behind Bowman in 20:11. Having spent the last week recovering from an ankle twist, it was an impressive performance for Dietrich. Scoring next was Sophomore Eli Lianez, who turned in the most improved time of the day by shaving 2 whole minutes off his previous season best by recording a 20:19. Next was Sophomore Nathan Zapata who pushed past a muddy tumble and hip slide on the course’s first curve. He shaved 30 seconds from his old PR and finished in 21:21. Another big story of the day was how freshman Jayden Jefferson, who just joined the team and school a month ago, turned in a 23:12 to round out the scoring five. Freshman Ethan Simpson almost caught his teammate in the final sprint. Simpson finished in 23:14, a huge improvement from his most recent 25:12 he ran at our home meet.
We have a few more hard training workouts remaining with some built in recovery days in order to prepare for the final meet of the season– the VISAA State Championship on Thursday, November 11 in Mechanicsville.
