Here is Michael Gibbons Parent Survival Guide for parents of female high school distance runners.
The 2015 FLYRA Middle School Cross Country State Championship is only a few days away. This Middle School Cross Country season has witnessed a number of outstanding performances by Florida's Middle School runners. On the cusp of the FLYRA Middle School State Championship Meet at Holloway Park in Lakeland, we take a look back at the most noteworthy performances of this Middle School Cross Country season as run in Middle School meets and not High School meets.
What a memorable morning of racing at the 2014 FLYRA MS Cross County State Championships! Dominating victories by new MS State Champions? Check. FLYRA MS XC State Meet record? Check. Emerging young talent? Check. Surprise top ten finishers? Check. Massive numbers of XC 3k PR’s? Check. Holloway Park was in pristine condition; the loose sand in the final 300 meters present in past years has been replaced with a thick carpet of close cut grass over the final few hundred meters. The MS athletes too were primed and ready and ran an amazing number of personal best times over the 3K cross country distance. All ten of the top ten girls set XC 3k personal bests and seven of the top ten boys set personal bests.
On Saturday, November 1st, a record field of over 1,000 middle school and elementary school athletes will descend upon Lakeland’s Holloway Park to compete at FLYRA’s Middle School Cross Country State Championship Meet. As in past years, middle school athletes will be coming from all corners of the state: Miami to Pensacola and Naples to Jacksonville. This year’s event will feature a number of new and fresh faces as five of last year’s girls top ten have graduated and eight of last year’s boys top ten have graduated.
It's nearing the end of October and that means the busy Middle School XC State Meet qualifying season has now concluded. Five Super Qualifiers and and many more Basic Qualifiers were held in October. This article highlights the top MS performances during the October qualifying season by focusing on the top 3 finishers at each of the 5 Super Qualifiers and referencing any performance in a Basic Qualifier that ranks in the MS top 10 for the State of Florida for the race distance.
The end of September marks the half-way point on the road to compete at the FLYRA Middle School Cross Country State Championship on a real cross country course at Holloway Park in Lakeland. September saw middle school runners from all parts of the state running impressive times over different courses. Unlike high school runners, the middle school athletes compete on courses of varying nominal length: 3000m, 2 miles/3200m and 2.1 miles (limited to Miami-Dade County).