Mustangs 12th at Culver

The team traveled to Culver Academy on Saturday to compete in the Culver Academies Invitational. Our performance there left me with mixed emotions... On one hand, our 12th place finish in the "Elite Race" is the best we've ever finished at Culver, while on the other I felt we could have (should have) raced better. We got out well in the first mile but gradually dropped back mid-race to end up pretty much in the middle of the pack in the team contest.

Stephen Pipilas ran a solid race to finish as our #1 runner. Stephen finished in the top 40 and ran a time fast enough that he would've won the Sophomore Race. Joey Eterno was our 3rd runner and also ran well. Coming off an early season injury, this was Joey's best performance so far this year. Arguably the best race of the day was had by Zach Scheffel. Zach was only 41 seconds slower than his Peoria time while the team averaged 86 seconds slower (Culver is 5k and a much slower course than Peoria).

Overall, it wasn't a particularly good or bad day for the Mustangs. Our workouts indicate that we should be competing at a much higher level, so there should still be a lot of excitement yet to come once the boys get a chance to run on some fresher legs down the home stretch of the season. Probably the most important thing to happen at Culver was that we had our top 7 all racing together for the first time all year. Once this unit starts to gel together a bit better and learn to race together, we should be incredibly tough.

Our next varsity meet is a great opportunity for us to run on the tough Lockport home course and see a number of the top teams from our sectional.

Go Mustangs!