The final stage of the season arrived yesterday at the Northfield Mountain Recreation Center, with the top WHS athletes racing against the best runners from other Massachusetts schools of similar enrollment size. This is the first of two rounds in the state tournament; unlike with other sports there are no power rankings or brackets. Every school with a team can enter up to seven runners in the Divisional round, with the top five comprising a scoring team. Only the top teams and the fastest individual finishers who aren't on those top teams make it to next week's Meet of Champions, the final race of the official high school calendar in Massachusetts.
The over 200 schools competing in the state are broken down into three divisions based on school size, with Division 1 schools being the largest and Division 3 schools the smallest. Each division is further broken down into three "waves," again based solely on school size. Each of the waves has around twenty to thirty teams competing; not every team fields the necessary five runners to make a scoring team. Wayland competes in 2B which sits squarely in the middle of the size breakdown, with 2A schools being a little larger and 2C schools a little smaller. 2B also includes DCL opponent Bedford, which has almost exactly the same student population as WHS. 2C includes Weston. All other DCL schools compete in Division 1, as they have substantially larger enrollments than Wayland, Bedford, and Weston.
The top seven teams in each wave and top ten individuals not on those top seven teams qualify to next weekend's second and final round, where all the qualifiers from 2A, 2B, and 2C face each other in the Division 2 Meet of Champions. There are also two wildcard teams qualifying from across all three Division 2 waves. Last year the boys team finished 4th at this meet, while Mia Rent and Arya Samaratunga qualified as individual wildcards in the girls race.
The three divisional round meets are held at three separate facilities--Wrentham Developmental Center, where Wayland competes every year in various invitational meets, Willard Field at Devens, and Northfield. The mere mention of the word "Northfield" strikes fear in the hearts of many athletes and their coaches, due to the vertical relief of the course. Vertical relief is defined as the difference in elevation between the lowest and highest point of a specific area, in this case a cross country course. The vertical relief at Wrentham is probably on the order of 10-15 feet. At Willard Field, with a climb up Malvern Hill in the third mile it's probably a bit less than 50 feet. The vertical relief of the WHS Cross country course is about 30 vertical feet. At Northfield, the vertical relief is over 200 feet. Most of that elevation change comes in the form of a stair-stepped grinding climb from the 600 meter mark of the course to just before the mile mark. For the remainder of the 5k (3.1 mile) course, this elevation gain is given back in a gradual fashion. With the finish line being right next to the starting line, the net elevation change of the course is of course zero, which comes as no comfort to anyone who's raced at Northfield. In fact, the Northfield course has inspired no shortage of kvetching over the years from athletes and coaches (the coaches perhaps more so). For the Wayland athletes, the goal was the same as always, to run the course in a steady, well-paced way that would yield the best possible result for each individual runner.
The boys were the first to race. Based on meet results over the course of the season, it seemed likely that the boys would be competing for one of the wildcard spots, as there appeared to be at least seven teams that had a stronger lineup on paper. Luckily the races aren't run on paper. In a championship race, it's every team competing against every other team at the same time. It can be very difficult to determine past the top couple of teams who might be filling the rest of the team places. It was clear that Wayland had done well, with Ryan Foley moving up from somewhere around 20th early on to finish in the top 15 and score a medal. He was followed closely by Brandon Hopps who was in the top 20. It's worth noting that their finishing places at this tournament level race were better than their places at the DCL Championship, attesting to the strength of the DCL.
Behind the Wayland top two Ryan Young had another strong effort to finish in the top 50 (there were 167 finishers total). The Wayland scoring five was completed by Archie Baker and a hard charging Reese Migdal, and the Wayland seven was rounded out by seniors Matthew Tan and Morgan Fallace. It was clear that the Wayland runners had raced the course well. What was not so clear was if it would be enough to earn a spot into next week's Meet of Champions. When the results were tallied, in fact Wayland came 6th of 23, and with a top 7 finish have qualified for the MOC. In the end, multiple teams that would have/could have/should have beaten Wayland were each missing a key runner from their results earlier in the season. It's also likely that some opponents were overwhelmed by the terrain. This is the fourth year in a row that the boys team has qualified; in addition, the Wayland boys team has a streak of top 10 finishes in this first round of the tournament going back to 2019.
The girls raced next, with a trio of Wayland runners taking on the vagaries of the Northfield course. As she did at last month's DCL Championship, Ava Miller led the way for Wayland with a strong effort that placed her just inside the top 40 out of 142 finishers. 9th grader Henrietta Schoeffler, whose affinity for Vermont meant she wasn't the least bit perturbed by the climbing on the course, also finished in the top half of the field. Rounding out the Wayland team was co-captain Ainsley Jay. While this group wasn't enough to be a scoring contingent, they acquitted themselves well and with none of them being seniors, we're looking forward to having them be joined by teammates next year to compete as a full team again.
splits for WHS athletes - there are none to share, as the layout of the course is such that it's quite difficult to both see the start of the race and be there at either of the two mile marks along the course. If you happened to record your splits on your watch feel free to share them with me for future reference. It's safe to say that the first uphill mile went significantly slower than on any other course this season.
WHS team and individual results at the MIAA and DCL Championship, 1997-present
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