Saturday, December 11, 2010

Footlocker Cross Country Championship

Andrew Gardner, a sophomore at Mead, finished fourth in a field of forty top cross country runners from across the country. I watched the race online. The course at Balboa Park in San Diego is hella tough. The winners of both the girls and boys race were absolutely incredible athletes and dominated the competition. Andrew will have two more opportunities to qualify for Footlocker Nationals. He has quite the future to look forward to.

There are two cross country championships for high school runners, the Nike Team National and the Footlocker National. North Central and Lewis & Clark competed at Nike Team Nationals which, as the name indicates, is for teams. You can read more about then at Spokanarama. The downside of competing at Nike Team Nationals is that some top runners miss out on the individual competition at Footlocker. With a sense of relief, for me anyway, we don't necessarily get to see who the top runner is. Besides, as good as these young athletes are, the answer changes almost every month.

3 comments:

Shan said...

Ahh, Balboa... gorgeous place. It's where the San Diego Rock N Roll Marathon started the year I ran. Well, really, we just went up and around it, back through downtown and whatnot. But that was not one of the two(!) "hills of note" on the course.

Congrats to the young Mead man. I, of course, only beat my own curiosity and self doubt when I ran. (Well, there were about 1500 people who finished after me, and a couple thousand who did not finish... but I was so close to them all that I don't feel we competed, if that makes sense.)

Hank Greer said...

That shows how great my memory is. Kathy and I ran the San Diego Rock 'n' Roll Marathon back in '08. I forgot we started at Balboa Park.

Shan said...

I ran in 2001. Perhaps since SD is my hometown it sticks a little more for me.