Well Joshua can now say he has ran against the best high school cross country runners in the state after competing Saturday morning at the Nike South Invitational held at The Woodlands just north of Houston. All the rain that moved through the DFW area on Thursday and Friday moved through the Houston area Friday afternoon and as a result, the course was very muddy. It was not raining during the meet and the temperature was ideal for runners in the high 50s.
Over all, the mud made for slower times than last year’s results, but never the less, there were some very fast times. Josh finished in 28th place with a time of 17:08 for the 5k. The winning time was a 15:35 turned in by the second ranked runner in the state, Craig Lutz of Lewisville Marcus. Josh ran against him earlier this year at the Southlake meet and the results were about the same. Lutz is a junior this year and he missed most of the track season last year with a stress fracture. Officially, there were 147 runners in the Elite High School division so to finish 28th was not too bad. Had Forney ran in the Regular High School division, Josh’s time would have got him third place.
As far as the team results, Forney placed 10th out of 21 teams. There were only four 4A teams in the Elite division with most of the teams being from 5A schools. The winning team was a 4A school from Boerne Champion. They are the defending 4A state champions in cross country and have all of their top seven runners back this year. In fact all seven of their runners finished in front of Josh. Their seventh runner was only 1.8 seconds in front of Josh.
Despite the course conditions, Josh said after the race, “This is my favorite course. I would love to run it again when it is dry.” The experience was a very good one for Josh and his teammates. It showed them how much they need to work over the next few weeks to get ready to compete in the post season meets. They have one more regular meet coming up Saturday in Mesquite. They will run at the Mesquite Poteet “Run The Farm” at Samuell Farm just east of Mesquite on Highway 80. This will also be the site of the district meet on October 31st. Josh ran very well last year on the Samuell Farm course and is expecting to run even better this year.
As always, we will let you know what happens. Hopefully the rainy weather will move out this week and dry things up around here. Over the last month, we have had over 12 inches of rain. Looking at the forecast, it doesn’t look very promising for a dry track Saturday.
I have attached a picture of Josh with all the mud on him after Saturday’s race.
Until next time…
Over all, the mud made for slower times than last year’s results, but never the less, there were some very fast times. Josh finished in 28th place with a time of 17:08 for the 5k. The winning time was a 15:35 turned in by the second ranked runner in the state, Craig Lutz of Lewisville Marcus. Josh ran against him earlier this year at the Southlake meet and the results were about the same. Lutz is a junior this year and he missed most of the track season last year with a stress fracture. Officially, there were 147 runners in the Elite High School division so to finish 28th was not too bad. Had Forney ran in the Regular High School division, Josh’s time would have got him third place.
As far as the team results, Forney placed 10th out of 21 teams. There were only four 4A teams in the Elite division with most of the teams being from 5A schools. The winning team was a 4A school from Boerne Champion. They are the defending 4A state champions in cross country and have all of their top seven runners back this year. In fact all seven of their runners finished in front of Josh. Their seventh runner was only 1.8 seconds in front of Josh.
Despite the course conditions, Josh said after the race, “This is my favorite course. I would love to run it again when it is dry.” The experience was a very good one for Josh and his teammates. It showed them how much they need to work over the next few weeks to get ready to compete in the post season meets. They have one more regular meet coming up Saturday in Mesquite. They will run at the Mesquite Poteet “Run The Farm” at Samuell Farm just east of Mesquite on Highway 80. This will also be the site of the district meet on October 31st. Josh ran very well last year on the Samuell Farm course and is expecting to run even better this year.
As always, we will let you know what happens. Hopefully the rainy weather will move out this week and dry things up around here. Over the last month, we have had over 12 inches of rain. Looking at the forecast, it doesn’t look very promising for a dry track Saturday.
I have attached a picture of Josh with all the mud on him after Saturday’s race.
Until next time…
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