What they did this Summer

by Herb Wills for DyeStat Florida

I don’t know if students are still called on to write “What I Did Last Summer” essays. In fact, I don’t remember if I ever had to write one of those myself. I recall reading “Peanuts” comic strips where Charlie Brown agonized over that assignment, but my experience is a blank.

Charlie Brown’s summers were usually filled with losing baseball games and a trip to summer camp. High school cross country runners, though, generally have to fill the summer months with miles. Some of them also do a little racing, and many of them (like Charlie Brown) head to camp. A successful cross country season, though, depends on a summer of training.

Florida has four returning high school cross country champions in 2015. Whether or not they repeat in November will mostly be determined by what they did between the end of track in May and the start of cross country in August. So what have they been up to this summer?

Winter Park’s Rafaella Gibbons is back after winning the 2014 Class 4A girls’ cross country title as a frosh, leading her squad to a team title. Gibbons picked up another gold medal during track season in the Class 4A girls’ 3200 which she won in 10:51.27. She followed that victory with a busy post-season of racing. Gibbons started on May 8 by lowering her 3200 PR with a 10:42.06 win at the Trinity Prep Distance Showcase. Next was the mile (11th, 5:02.94) at Golden South on May 23, followed by the two mile (6th, 11:11.61) at New Balance Nationals on June 19. That’s enough material for anyone’s summer journal, but after a short break Gibbons was training again--including a week at Brevard Distance Camp during mid-July. Was this the kind of summer that Gibbons and the Wildcats needed to repeat in November? We’ll get our first clue at Winter Park’s first meet this season, the Deland Invitational on Saturday morning, August 29.

Not everyone races during the summer, though. Take for instance the returning Class 4A boys’ cross country champion, Longwood Lyman High senior Joshua Jacques. Back in May, minutes after running 9:11.00 in the 3200 to win the Class 4A title in that event, Jacques shrugged off the idea of further competition on the track in 2015.

“I’m going to take a little break and then start training for cross,” said Jacques. “Our goal is to win as a team again.”

Lyman's Joshua Jacques on his way to winning the 2014 Boys 4A XC Championship - by Bob Murphy

Just like he did in the summer of 2014, Jacques stayed away from the post-season circuit, even passing up the Golden South Classic in his backyard. But don’t think that he hasn’t been preparing for a senior-year title defense this fall. Jacques was training with his team during late July at the Brevard Distance Camp up in the North Carolina mountains--a break from the Central Florida heat and a chance to run away from bears instead of alligators. We’ll get our first chance to see how well he and the rest of the Lyman Greyhounds prepared for the season when they open their 2015 campaign at the Deland Invitational on Saturday morning, August 29.

Joel Lacy of Fort Lauderdale Calvary Christian Academy also stayed out of track competition over the summer. The returning Class 2A boys’ cross country champion, Lacy put his spikes in the closet after running 4:28.56 in the 1600 at the State Track Meet, placing third in class 2A. He didn’t even run in the South Florida Distance Showcase, held on Calvary Christian’s track. Part of Calvary Christian’s summer preparation for cross country was a Summer Retreat at Johnson Farm in Glenville, North Carolina, on July 10 - 18. We’ll see the results of that Retreat and the rest of their summer training on Saturday morning, August 29 when Lacy and the Calvary Christian Eagles race at the Kings Academy Invitational in West Palm Beach.

The South Florida Distance Showcase may have been held at Calvary Christian, but it was hosted by Pine Crest. Pine Crest’s Tsion Yared didn’t race at the Showcase, but she wasn’t able to race much at all during the 2015 track season. Yared had a phenomenal cross country season last year and won both the Class 2A girls’ high school 5K and the middle school girls’ 3K. As an eighth-grader this fall, she’ll have the opportunity to defend both titles. The climax of Pine Crest's summer training is a week, August 8 - 15, in the North Carolina mountains at Camp Highlander. After that, it's back to South Florida where racing for Yared and Pine Crest starts on Friday, September 4, with the Martin County Under The Lights Invitational.

It must be difficult for a language arts teacher to assign a grade to a “What I Did Last Summer” essay. It’ll be easier to grade Florida’s cross country runners on their summers, though. Those seasons of training will be measured on the Apalachee Regional Park Championship Cross Country Course on November 7 at the State Final. Begging, pleading, or offering to do extra credit won’t change anyone’s grade, either.

Northwest Florida Correspondent Herb Wills

Herb Wills' running career goes back to the 1971 boys' age-group mile at the Florida Relays. Since losing that race he has won the 1976 Florida High School class 4A cross-country championship, 1979 AAU USA junior titles in cross-country and the 10,000 meters, and the 1989 TAC USA 30K national championship. As a distance runner at Florida State University from 1978 to 1982, he was NCAA All-American three times in track and once in cross country, and won a silver medal in the marathon at the 1981 World University Games. Graduating Florida State with a degree in mathematics, in the following years Wills ran in the USA Olympic Marathon Trials in 1984, 1988, and 1992, and placed tenth in the Boston Marathon in 1989. After more than a few years of duty as a hurdle setter and lane judge at track meets, Wills discovered that the public address announcer not only got to sit down at meets but was also sheltered from the rain. Since that revelation you can hear him with a microphone in his hand at several track and cross-country events in the Tallahassee area. Writing is another activity you can do while sitting down, and Wills has written about running for Racing South magazine and Tallahassee's local newspaper, the Tallahassee Democrat.

You can read more running related tidbits in his blog at http://troubleafoot.blogspot.com/

Herb Wills NorthWest Florida Reports 2015 ARTICLES / 2014 ARTICLES