My team raced in the Maryland-DC state championship for private schools today. In Maryland and Virginia, unlike in most states, the private schools do not compete in the state-sponsored championship events/tournaments. This has an unfortunate effect on overall competition, by splitting the best teams. This time around Gonzaga was vying for first place, against strong competition from St. Albans. We had narrowly defeated them a few weeks ago, and felt confident that we could repeat that performance, but we came up short. Several runners fell apart in the last mile and we ended up being edged out for 2nd by fellow Jesuit school Loyola.I continue to be frustrated by near misses at state championships in my coaching career. At Wilmington Christian we finished in 2nd place three years in a row, and in each of those years we were as good as the team that won, but in each case the other team had a better day. Last year we ran our worst race of the season at the state championship and came in third; champion Calvert Hall definitely had a better team, but winning was not out of our grasp.
On the positive side, Tatiana and Calista were able to come out to cheer for the team. Calista had fun exploring the recently-harvested corn field and checking out the goats and pigs.
