The Twilight Invitational, held since 2011 in the evening hours at the Cape Cod Fairgrounds in Falmouth, has become the most popular event put on by the Mass. State Track Coaches Association (MSTCA). Its popularity is such that in 2018 the meet was split into separate nights for larger and smaller schools. For the first (and hopefully last) time Wayland had athletes racing on both nights. Wayland's enrollment ranks among the smaller schools and the WHS teams would thus normally compete in the night for small and medium sized schools. The meet director had made the offer for smaller sized schools to switch to Saturday's large school division if they desired. When a bus was unable to be procured for Friday's small and medium school night, I switched the team into Saturday's meet instead. In order that 10th graders would be able to attend both the meet and Saturday's ever-popular 10th grade semi-formal, just the sophomores went on Friday in the WHS "booster bus" which has a 15 passenger capacity including the driver--enough for the 10th grade crew but not for the entire team.
On Friday six WHS sophomores competed. Matthew Tan continued an upward trend for him by running a solid time in the 10th grade boys race and taking initiative from the start. He was joined by Leo Ciccarelli, Edge Wheeler and Noah Goldstein, while Yathartha Srivastava and Arya Nagalla ran in the novice race that started the meet. On Saturday, Wayland returned with a larger contingent. The most noteworthy results included Ainsley Jay finishing in the top 30 in the 9th grade girls race and Will Jackson finishing in the top 40 in a very deep and competitive boys varsity race that featured some of the top teams in the state. Jackson's time would have placed in the top 25 on Friday. Arya Samaratunga had a strong effort in the girls varsity race. The boys varsity team, led by Jackson, finished 15th of 20 teams, and probably would have placed in the top 10 at Friday's meet.
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