Autumn Wilson And Emmanuel Sgouros To Compete At Arcadia Inv

Autumn Wilson (L) and Emmanuel Sgouros (R) will compete at the Arcadia Invitational

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This is the weekend ahead of UIL district meets and the majority of schools in the league will be getting prepared for next week. That means it could be kind of quiet on some fronts this weekend throughout the state. That won't stop the private and parochial schools in the state from competing. Much of the action this weekend will come from Homeschool, SPC, and TAPPS athletes.

Howerever, not only will they compete here in Texas, but also from outside of state lines. Two of Texas' best athletes will travel to California to compete in the Arcadia Invitational, Autumn Wilson (St Dominic Savio) and Emmanuel Sgouros (Houston St. Johns).

It was just last weekend when we saw Natalie Cook (Flower Mound) head out to California to compete at the Stanford Invitational and run a national record in the 5,000m. There is a chance this weekend for either Wilson or Sgouros to snag a record themselves, but at minimum, they could possibly get some PRs.

Autumn Wilson competes in the 100m at the Texas Relays

Photo Credit: Jamison Michaels

Wilson will compete in the 100m and the 200m events this weekend. The defending TAPPS sprint champion will take on Reign Redmond (Carson, CA) who won the 2021 Arcadia Invitational in the 100m. Redmond has an 11.77 SB in the 100m and is undefeated over the last two seasons in the event; she has a 24.41 SB in the 200m.

Wilson is fresh off her Nike Indoor Nationals championship in the 60m and a Texas Relays win in 11.19 (+3.2) over an impressive field. The University of Georgia signee should be the class of the field and should make it two straight weeks a Texas girl goes into California and come home with a win.

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Sgouros will have more of a challenge in his 3,200m race. In fact, he might not be chasing a win as much as he is a time as he really wants to run sub 9:00 in the event. Sgouros ran 9:05.82 in the 3200m indoors last year and then ran a 9:01.71 outdoors. Those were his best opportunities to reach his goal last year.

This year, he has already given it two shots at getting a PR, but the attempts fell short. The field went more for a cautious run at the Texas Distance Festival and Sgouros had to press in the last half of the race just to run 9:02.53. A week later, it was another strategic race that also led to another 9:02.05.

Emmanuel Sgouros competes at the 2021 Texas Distance Festival

Photo Credit: Jessie McCabe

This weekend, the known strategy of this field is to run as fast as possible. Some of the participants are already prepared to "fall on their face after the finish line." The historic Newbury Park distance runners will race in the 3,200m where they've already run 8:33.32 (Colin Sahlman - National Record holder), 8:39.57 (Leo Young), and 8:43.93 (Leo Young). There are also 15 boys entered with 8:58.82 or better seed times.

Sgouros, the University of Texas signee was 10th at the Eastbay Cross Country Championships and will have plenty of his friends from there to compete with. The Texas XC Gatorade POY could get the sub 9:00 performance he's been looking for.