Girls compete at the Lovejoy XC Fall Festival
As the season progresses, so do the teams. We will highlight a team or two, or maybe even more on Team Tuesdays to show which ones are doing some good things.
This week, we have teams representing each high school conference in Texas (SPC,TAPPS, and the UIL). Check out the impressive performances of the teams below and see how they impressed.
Round Rock Boys
The boys from Round Rock are having themselves a good start to the 2021 season. They ran well at the Vista Ridge meet two weeks ago winning both the varsity elite and open races. This weekend at the FEAST Patriot Inv. they did more of the same.
The varsity boys ran a superb 16:02 team average with a mere 46 second split. Their top three runners of Cade Stevens (7th), Luke Hein (9th), and Daniel Mendez (12th) were all within six seconds of one another at the finish.
However, it wasn't just their elite boys who dominated; their JV boys were also pretty stout. They placed eight runners in the top 12 of the JV boys race that had 364 competitors.
The Round Rock JV boys finished with a 17:33 team average and 29 second split. More astounding was their 19 point win total and placing their top seven runners before the second place team's second runner.
Houston Episcopal Girls
Episcopal competed at the Conroe Grand Oaks Grizzly XC Invitational and their number one runner Kat Kwiatkowski cruised to the win in 18:36.3.
The rest of the Episcopal girls were no slouches either as they went on to take the meet win with a 19:48.28 team average. One of the team's strengths is definitely having a low stick runner like Kwiatkowski, but the other runners do their job as well.
This weekend, the numbers two and three runners were within 14 seconds of one another and the four and five runners were within 13 seconds of each other.
Episcopal already has the top SPC girls team average of 19:04.52 when you consider their seasons best runs.
San Antonio Central Catholic Boys
The Central Catholic boys had a solid race on Saturday at the FEAST Patriot Inv. knocking off many UIL teams.
They finished third behind two UIL 6A teams (Round Rock and Austin Vandegrift) with 153 total points. Using a 16:28 team average and a 1:18 split, Central Catholic had their top two runners (Nathan Morales and Robert Trevino) go sub 16:00.
After finishing third in last year's TAPPS 6A state meet, these guys could be back on the hunt for a state title this year.
Austin Vandegrift Girls
Vandegrift is using their youth to keep the program's momentum going this year. They went from unranked in the CCCAT 6A team rankings to No. 9 last week after their Southlake Carroll XC Invite performance.
They made that look justified at the FEAST Patriot Inv. by dropping a 18:48 team average and a 36 second split. Annie Burton and Caitlin Garrett both came up big with top ten places.
Other than senior Taylor Mathis, the rest of the scorers were all sophomores; youth seems to be this year's venom for the Lady Vipers
Lovejoy Girls
The Lovejoy Lady Leopards are ranked No. 3 in the CCCAT 5A Girls team rankings and over the weekend, they proved why that is so.
They hosted their own meet and invited many of the top teams in the UIL 5A classification and then they straight up put it down. Coach Carly Littlefield's girls used a runner-up individual finish from number one runner Amy Morefield (18:10) a ninth place finish from number two runner Sara Morefield (18:40.90), and a 12th place finish by Kailey Littlefield (19:15.20).
That 1, 2, 3 punch helped lead them to a 19:04 team average on their tough Myers Park course. Most impressively, Lovejoy topped the back-to-back state champions Boerne Champion and other top UIL 5A teams as well as some 6A teams.