In the past few years, Loudoun Valley has built tremendous depth with a large team that typically wins most, if not all, team titles at different invitationals – varsity and junior varsity. Kevin Carlson has seen that from the Vikings’ varsity team since 2016.
But with that depth come some tough calls when the numbers crunch for championship races, and that’s where the Vikings found themselves last November. With another Nike Cross Southeast title in hand, the harder task was figuring out who would represent the team as it went to defend its 2017 title. Carlson finished 113th overall that year — 7th for Loudoun Valley, but in the scoring five for all but three other teams.
Carlson and Mateo Barreto finished in a dead heat for number seven on the team in 2018. Barreto, like Chase Dawson a year before, ran unattached. In essence, the free agent must just beat the last Viking to make the team. It’s cutthroat, but when a team trains for November but is limited to seven runners through the Virginia postseason, it’s the most effective way to field the strongest team, if only by fractions of a second. That 2018 team went on to be the first repeat NXN champion on the boys’ side.
“We had to ask to see the video replay, that’s how close it was,” Coach Marc Hunter said. “From where I was standing, I could see Kevin cross first. The video showed Mateo first.”
- The Klingle Valley Trail will be closed, possibly until December, to allow for installation of a new storm drain, concrete manholes and a concrete headwall.
- Following outcry from its decision to add two lanes of traffic near a Capital Crescent Trail crossing, the Montgomery County Planning Board voted to delay funding, for five years, that would shift the trail to a controlled intersection for users to cross Little Falls Parkway. The current configuration, which restricts traffic to one lane in each direction at the trail crossing, will remain.
- The W&OD Trail is closed under Wilson Boulevard for a few weeks to allow for the removal and replacement of the underpass.
- Montgomery County is launching a pedestrian master plan.
If you see Garrett Suhr running the 100 meters this spring, you’ll know things are going really well for him.
By Suhr’s retelling, Richard Montgomery Coach Davy Rogers promised him that if he got through three seasons — outdoor track in 2019, cross country in 2019 and the upcoming indoor track season, he would be allowed to compete in the marquee sprinting event.
“I don’t remember agreeing to that exactly, that might be one of those bets he made with himself,” Rogers said. “I can’t keep track of all these deals he makes. If he is healthy all three seasons, he’ll be running for a good college team and he can make a deal there.”
Bethany Graham wasn’t sure what to make of Taryn Parks. The senior from Greencastle-Atrim in Pennsylvania has been a mainstay at the Foot Locker Cross Country Championships since her freshman year and had run 4:37 for 1600 meters over Memorial Day weekend. Graham ultimately chose not to change her plans for the Oatlands Invitational.
“I knew she raced pretty similar to me, that she liked to get out,” Graham said. “I decided to just run normally and see what happened. I didn’t want to change too much because she was in the race.”
Successful partnerships between coaches and runners all involve some give and take. Regardless of how established a coach is, two-way communication is crucial to keeping runners healthy and improving. For a new coach whose native sport is soccer, like Lauren Brewer at Broad Run, having a runner who knows the ropes helps a lot.
Senior Ellie Desmond has been doing her fair share of teaching.
“When last year started winding down, she saw how many seniors we were losing and knew she had to step up,” Brewer said. “As soon as the track season ended, she asked if she could take on more responsibility and help guide the team.”
Brewer had been an assistant cross country coach the previous two years, but was still new to the structure of distance running training programs. Fortunately Desmond was a voracious student and willing to offer her experience.
“We got the coaches and captains together and came up with a program together — the long runs, tempo runs, track work, why it’s important to schedule things a certain way,” Brewer said. “She’s absolutely put her footprint on the way we run the team. She’s setting the standard, and she knows how to communicate to the other runners how I want to run this team.”
Name: Cody Uhing
Self-described age group: 25-29
Residence: SE D.C.
Occupation: Press Secretary, First Five Years Fund
Why you run: There is no better way to learn about your city than hitting the streets. When I first moved to D.C., knowing no one, I decided it was time to pick a hobby that got me out of my neighborhood and into the city. Since then, I joined a running club and my motivation became running my first marathon. Like many others, that first marathon was all it took. I signed up for my second the next year. This year, I am taking my running home to Nebraska for the Sept. 15 Omaha Marathon, which is also going to be my final long training run for the MCM50K.
When did you get started running: As a high school student I was never fast enough to compete in track, and our small town had no XC team. That said, I still enjoyed the alone time I had when I would go for a run around town. Now I do it for the camaraderie and friendships I have made over the years of running in D.C.
Bryce Lentz was frustrated with his dead legs. After he dropped a place to finish third at last week’s Pole Green Invitational, he aired his bodily grievances to his coach Dave Davis.
“I really don’t care, it’s September,” Davis recalled saying to Lentz, who is starting his junior year at Colgan High School. “The leaves are still green and you’re running 65 miles a week. Nothing matters.”
Lentz is still a little green himself. Even though he has been running since seventh grade, the last year, since moving to Virginia and winning the JV race at Great Meadow in his 2018 debut, has been steadily finishing toward the front of races. He won the Cardinal District last year, plus the 1600 and 3200 meters during the track season.
After finishing fifth in Virginia’s 6A cross country state championship, and because he’s 6’3″, he is losing the element of surprise.
“He won’t be able to sneak up on people anymore,” Davis said. “It was nice to hide, but we can’t hide anymore.”
Bethany Graham has plenty of reasons to fuel her running with frustration.
Despite brilliant starts to the past two cross country seasons, she hasn’t made the state meet since her freshman year. Stress fractures in 2017 and a sprained ankle in 2018 have kept her out of postseason racing.
Yet, she falls back on positive thinking. Back to something she learned through Girls on the Run.
“You just take the negative plug out,” she said. “It sounds silly but it still works for me today. Mentality is a big part of racing. If you’re not mentally confident, you’re not going to do well. You won’t have the confidence to compete with the best.
“I had to work on that for a while, but now it’s one of my strongest points.”
Race car driver and raconteur Reece Bobby said it best, “If you ain’t first, you’re last.”
Sean Stuck knows that. At last spring’s Virginia 6A track championships, he brought up the rear in the 1600 meters, finishing just 16 seconds out of first place. Fortunately, he won the 3200 meters.
Sometimes races go well and sometimes they don’t, and for Stuck, it’s much more more of the former, lately. Since he hit is growth spurt after his freshman year and dropped baseball, he has found a home on West Springfield’s top seven, and he’s an integral part of the Spartans’ state title hopes this fall.
“Sean’s main strength is that he doesn’t fear anybody or anything,” said West Springfield coach Chris Pellegrini. “That governor in everyone’s brain that tells people they maybe shouldn’t do something, that gives them doubt? He just doesn’t have that; his confidence exists in that moment of truth during races.”
Now that a lot of the Fairfax County running gang was back together at the Monroe Parker Invitational, Albert Velikonja decided to see who had done their homework over the summer.
A mile and a half in to Burke Lake’s 2.98-mile course, he surged, and looked around to see how it all shook out.
“I wasn’t trying to run away with it, I just wanted to see if anyone would come with me,” he said.
Herndon senior Colin McCauley and West Springfield seniors Chris Weeks and Sam Pritchard all joined him in the front.
