Girl's Cross Country: Knights look to Seahawk Invitational for hot start

By Ben Spector

Winning After MidKnight

 

MIDDLETOWN-The Middletown High School Knights Girl’s Cross Country team will look to start their season off on the right foot when they head down to Edgewater, Maryland to compete in the 2016 Seahawk Cross Country Invitational on Saturday September 3^rd at 9:00 a.m.

This will be a big opportunity for the Knights as the Seahawk Invitational is one of the major cross country events in the opening weekend of the Maryland cross country season, as top teams from all across the state will converge with all of them sharing the goal of getting their season’s started off in the right direction.

This meet will be a unique one for the Knights as it will be begin their 2016-2017 campaign, the first season in a while in which genuine title hopes are blossoming in the Middletown Valley thanks to a core of runners which has performed for years and know will get the opportunity to shine on the big stage.

And, what better way for Middletown to open its’ season by throwing them directly into the line of fire by competing in this meet, which is a prestigious meet with big name schools, an early morning time slot and a course that can be physically demanding on runners.

The early morning time slot normally is not an issue for runners as most meets during the course of the season but because this is the first meet of the season and the first time that most of the runners will be waking up at this time slot and running straight away it will be interesting to see how the runner react to this new adjustment.

The tough competition, something that we mentioned in relation to the Boy’s Cross Country meet preview, doesn’t change when taking a deeper view at the Girl’s side s most of the tough teams that will be competing on the Boy’s side will be also fielding a Girl’s side. The meet will feature a large group of girls that have times in the upper echelon of top times in the state of Maryland, a group that includes Middletown senior Reilly Caldwell.

The Knights will look to improve on their finish from last year as last year the Knights managed to only come into 15^th place out of 19^th place in the meet last year, something that Middletown most likely can improve on.

One of the main issues for the Knights at last year’s meet was that only one of the Middletown runners finished in the top 50 of the Girl’s Varsity A Division leaving the Knights with a large number of low scores, although part of that was because some of the scoring runners for Middletown were participating in some of their first ever cross country meets.

The difference for Middletown from this year to last year is that all four of the runners who scored last year from Middletown are more experienced and especially those runners who scored later last year such as Abbe Pannucci and Sophie Stafford.

For the Knights this will give Middletown a chance to improve on their standing from last year and start their season off on a positive note, one which could propel Middletown into a hot start.