2015 Varsity Boys Cross Country
Coach Peter Livingstone-McNelis
BCS All Conference 1st Team - Tra'Von Blakely
BCS Honorable Mention - Austin Salome
BCS Honorable Mention - Casey Nolan
11-7 - MHSAA State Finals
All three athletes performed well at the State Meet with Callie breaking her
lifetime personal best by 23 seconds and finishing 133rd/250 with a time of
21:09 while Tajah Thomas and Travon each ran their 2nd fastest times of the
year, running respectively 21:21 (149th) and 17:38 (114th). It was also great to
see so many runners from the team cheering their teammates on including: Kendall
Green, Garrett Green, Sara Schroeder-Crispillo, Austine Salome, Katie Rooney,
Mubark Hasan, and Vincent McNelis. Way to Go Team!!!
10-31 - MHSAA Regional Meet
I am happy to say that I would like to give the Golden Shoe Awards again to
the girl's and boy's teams which both finished higher than their rankings going
into the Regional Meet. On the girl's side, the team was ranked 10th out of 12
teams but finished 8th only 4 points away from finishing 7th. While the boy's
team which was ranked 6th finished 5th and was only 17 points away from
finishing 3rd and qualifying for the State Championship as a team. The girl's
team a week before the Regional Championship was projected to score 216 points
but instead score 179 points, or in other words, 37 points better than
predicted! Additionally, the boy's team was projected to score 168 points but
instead scored 111 points--a 57 point improvement! Way to go Colts!!!
The above achievements which accomplished by a great overall team effort,
however, a couple of runners deserve extra recognition for having exceptional
races. On the boy's side, I would like to highlight the accomplishment of Travon
Blakely who once again qualified for the State Championship by finishing 12th.
Additionally, Seth Ansel ran a terrific race and nearly qualified for the State
Championship as well finishing in 18th place (3 places and 23 seconds away).
Moreover, Mubark Hasan ran a gutsy race running stride for stride with Seth for
more than two miles before fading over the approximately last 1/2 mile to finish
a very respectable 31st place out of field of 94 runners. Furthermore, special
acknowledgement should be given to Tanner Phares who had his best race of the
season coming into the race as Comstock's 7th runner and finishing 5th for the
team while setting a new P.R. of 19:32 (23 second improvement) & taking 45th
place. He also was only runner on the both boy's and girl's team to set a P.R.
which is remarkable given the difficulty of the course. Congratulations
Team!!!
10-24 - Kalamazoo Christian Invitational
I would like to congratulate both the girl's and boy's team for having
fantastic performances at the Kalamazoo Christian Comet Invitational. First of
all the girl's team which I had set the team goal of beating Bangor the 6th
Ranked Team in Region 22 did so even though Comstock Girl's Team was Ranked 10th
going into the meet while the Boy's Team though Ranked 6th in the region lost by
only 6 pts. to Watervliet the 3rd Ranked Team in the Region which I had also
challenged them to beat. It is for these reasons that I would like to honor both
the girl's and boy's teams with the Golden Shoe Awards.
On the boy's side, the above performance was done largely not by the top
runners all running their P.R.'s but instead collectively the Top 4 runners
running near or slightly better than their P.R.'s while the Watervliet team
didn't come as close to running their P.R.'s. The boy's team did though have
three P.R.'s with Casey Nolan running 18:18 achieving a 7 second P.R., Vincent
McNelis running 19:28 achieving a 57 second P.R. and Tanner Phares running 19:58
achieving a 19 second P.R. The boy's team which took 6th place out of 10 schools
behind 4 ranked teams and a 5th team which competes on the Division I level, did
so behind Travon Blakely finishing 12th out of 111 runners (17:35), Austin
Salome 16th (17:55), Casey Nolan 28th (18:18), Mubark Hasan 33rd (18:35), Seth
Ansel 40th (19:00), Rush Rodwan 42nd (19:07), and Tanner Phares finishing 61st
(19:58).
10-20 - Comstock Tri
Comstock Varsity Boys Results
Comstock Varsity Girls Results
10-13 - BCS Berrien Springs Jamboree
BCS Jamboree at Berrien Springs Boys Results
BCS Jamboree Finish Order
10-10 - Allegan Invitational
First, I would like to congratulate the Boy's Varsity Team for earning a
2nd place plaque at yesterday's Allegan Jamboree as well as recognize the
individual efforts of several
boy's on the varsity team whereby 6 out of the 7 runners had P.R.'s and 2
out of 6 girl's on the varsity team had P.R.'s as well as 3 out of the 4 boy's
on the J.V. team had P.R.'s.
On the boy's side, there were a lot of individual fine performances but I
would like to give Golden Shoe recognition to the following runners: Mubark
Hasan who once again earned a medal by finishing 17th (18:24) and smashing his
P.R. by 55 seconds, Rush Rodwan who earned a medal in this same race by placing
25th (19:09) with a new P.R. by 11 seconds (sub 19 is there after never broken
20 previously going into this his Senior year), and Tanner Phares who finished
6th on the Varsity team running 21:17 and thereby lowering his P.R. by 13
seconds. Also, Rodrigo Juarez efforts need to be highlighted due to the gutsy
performance he turned in which resulted in his P.R. being lowered to 20:44 (a 19
second drop) despite a bruised thigh muscle caused by being kicked the day
before in a soccer match. Go Colts!!!
10-3 - Otsego Invitational
Yesterday the boy's and girl's teams had a meet at the Otsego Invitational
in the boy's varsity race the team took 5th place out of 14 teams while the
girl's varsity team without their No. 3 & No. 4 runners (Sara
Schroeder-Crispillo & Kendall Green) took 10 out of 12 teams.
In the boy's varsity race, Travon (17:36) and Austin (18:04) both earn
medals finishing 10th and 22nd out of field of 101 runners while Tajah Thomas
(21:20) and Callie James (22:04) both earned medals finishing 11th and 22nd out
of field of 98 runners. Also, Tanner Phares (21:30) earned a medal finishing 9th
in the J.V. race.
In terms of the Golden Shoe awards, I would like to give it to both the
Girl's Varsity Team and the Boy's J.V. Team. On the girl's team, Tajah, Callie,
Patricia, Nareai, and Katie (28:03) all set P.R.'s in the race, and Katie did so
despite having to overcome some pain in her knee that had been bothering her all
week, while in the Boy's J.V.'s race, four out of the five runners broke their
P.R.s.
Given the above it is hard to decide who on the team is deserving of
receiving individual Golden Shoe award recognition but I would like to shine the
spotlight on Dino Sively, Rodrigo Jaurez, Vincent McNelis, Patricia Sively, and
Nareai McPherson performances.
On the boy's side, Dino (20:55) did a great job running to the front of the
pack at the start of the race and putting himself in a position to medal by
being 8th at the mile mark and being in contention to finish in the Top 10
throughout the entire race. In addition, Rodrigo (21:03) showed also that he is
not afraid to push the pace or unlock his "beast mode" by breaking his P.R. by
74 seconds and being only two seconds behind Dino and alongside of Tanner at the
2 mile mark. Special recognition should also be given to Vincent (21:25) for
making the competitive decision to run in the Varsity race despite having the
option of running in the J.V. race knowing that he would more than likely medal
in the J.V. race. Moreover, he managed to break his P.R. by a few seconds after
not having run a race in almost a month and despite being up the night before
until 2:30 a.m. taking AP online tests.
9-29 - BCS Comstock Invitational
Once again, I am proud to be able to say that Golden Shoe Awards go to both
the Boy's and Girl's Teams that finished 3rd in the 2nd Jamboree after both
teams had finished 4th at the previous Jamboree. This was the team goal going
into the meet and both teams accomplished this feat. The bar was set relatively
high considering the boy's team scored 29 pts. more than the 3rd place team did
in the 1st Jamboree and the girl's team scored 28 pts. more. Nonetheless, the
boy's team bested the fourth place team by 2 pts. and the girl's team did so by
8 pts. in this meet.
Remarkably the boy's team is now in a position to be in a three way tie for
2nd in the League if they finish 2nd at the 3rd and final Jamboree. This is
possible because the Mendon's boy's team took 2nd in the 1st Jamboree but took
4th in the 2nd Jamboree, while Berrien Springs team took 3rd in the 1st Jamboree
and 2nd in the 2nd Jamboree. In order for this scenario to occur though the
Mendon's team would need to finish 3rd in the next Jamboree and Berrien Springs
take 4th which is a real possibility considering only 7 pts. separated the 2nd
place team from the 4th place team in this last race. Moreover, I think Mendon
has a better team than Berrien Springs. On the other hand, Comstock boy's team
will need to beat both Mendon and Berrien Spring, otherwise, our team will
finish fourth--we are not going there!
Individually given the above team performances several girl's and boy's on
the team are worthy receipts of the M.J. (a.k.a. Michael Johnson) Golden Shoe
Awards: On the boy's side, there were also several outstanding performances turned
in with Seth Ansel running his first meet this year finishing 13th out of field
of 70 runners and four other runners finishing in the Top 25 in the meet with
Travon Blakely leading the way at 9th with Austin Salome only a few seconds
behind Seth in 15th place followed in quick succession by Casey Nolan (18th),
Mubark Hasan (19th) and Rush Rodwan (25th). These finishes place Travon in great
position to earn All-Conference Honors and means that Austin will need to run
slightly better in the final league meet to pull off this feat but he is within
striking distance. Unfortunately, since Seth didn't run the 1st league meet
point wise he is probably not in a position to earn All-Conference Honors but it
is not of the question that he like Travon and Austin he could earn All-Regional
Honors by placing in the Top 15 at the Regional Championships. Casey and Mubark
also by their finishes in the first two league meets put themselves back in
position to earn All-Conference Honorable Mention recognition.
Lastly, It should be highlighted that despite Rush being frustrated with
his performance during the race he did not give up which resulted in him passing
two runners in the final 400 meters of the race one of whom was on Mendon's Team
which proved critical to Comstock's team besting Mendon's team as Rush was able
to as our 6th runner beat Mendon's 5th. In short, every point or every place
makes a difference and quite frankly it will take efforts like this from our
team to advance to the State Meet since there so many teams in our Regional
capable of making it to the championship race. Nonetheless, we are definitely in
the mix so that if runners don't go individually from the team we are as likely
to go as a team!
Comstock Varsity Boys Results
Comstock Varsity Girls Results
9-23 - Lawrence Invitational
Yesterday's meet produced another exceptional run by the team with almost
the entire team setting season and/or lifetime P.R.'s. Even more impressively
this was done after the team ran on this same course under similar conditions
only a month ago and we as team were very pleased with our performance as a
whole back then i.e., boy's team took 1st by one point over Lawrence and girl's
team took 2nd after not finishing as a team in five years. Remember also the
girl's team toeing the line in this race with only six runners as opposed to
eight runners now and the team chanting No Walk/No Drop because this was a real
worry with both Katie and Samantha needing to walk in practices prior to this
race to complete the workouts. Four weeks later this is not a worry at all with
Katie running 6th for the team some 2:08 faster than she did in this first race,
and Samantha after having dropped out of this race, now as the 8th finisher for
the team (only 30 seconds back of Katie ) being able to place ahead of the 7th
runner for three out of the four schools that the team faced.
I was also excited to see how much both the boy's and girl's team cheered
for each other at this meet and how well individuals on the team pushed each
other in the race to run their best--prime examples of this were TnT (Tajah) and
Trailblazer (Callie) as well as StopnWatch (Travon) and 6 mil. (Austin).
Moreover, it was incredibly heartening to see the team bounce back from not
having had a particular good races at last week's 1st League Jamboree. Now the
team is poised to do very well at next league meet Tuesday, September 29 on our
home course and I think several runners on the team can still make
All-Conference or receive Honorable Mention if these same individuals continue
to perform as well as they did yesterday!
As far as the Golden Show Awards, I would like to award the Golden Shoe
Award first to the boy's team for having won their 1st invitational and doing so
against 6 other schools as well as recognize several runners on both the girl's
and boy's team for their outstanding individual performances.
On the boy's side, the Golden Shoe receipts are Travon Blakely who was the
individual winner in the race posting a time of 17:33 which was just off his
lifetime P.R. by 22 seconds as well as Senior Austin Salome who finished 3rd in
a field of 52 runners and for the first time ever broke 18 minutes after having
run 18:48 as a freshmen. In addition, special recognition is deserving for Rush
Rodwan who after a couple of sub-par performances came back with a vengeance
besting his all time fastest time by 29 seconds and recording 1:36 improvement
over the first time he ran at the beginning of the season on this course. He
also received a medal for finishing 12th which provided a great 1 thru 4 punch
for the team with Casey Nolan finishing just off his P.R. in 7th place with a
time of 18:42. Special recognition is deserved also for Sam Perry who continues
to show incredible improvement dropping 1:44 off his P.R. that he had set just
last week. Sam is truly becoming the Anchor of this team similar to the runner
he was nicknamed after featured in the McFarland USA movie. He is now running a
very respectable 22:51, especially as a first year runner after having started
the year running on the same course in 27:27. Lastly, I would remiss not to
acknowledge the great performance that Jermiah Horton gave in his first ever
cross country race finishing just a few seconds behind Sam in a time of 22:53.
This is especially noteworthy since he was worried that he might not even finish
the race based on his level of conditioning going into the race yet wound up
finishing ahead of ten other runners in the field.
9-17 - Delton-Kellogg Invitational
At the Delton Invitational, the boy's bounced back and had a very strong
showing against a very tough field finishing 3rd out of 10 teams and only 7
points out of second place. This was done with very solid performances up front
once again from Travon and Austin who finished 3rd and 5th respectively and
breakout performances from both Casey Nolan and Mubark Hasan who are the
receipts for this race's Golden Shoe Awards based on their high finishes 11th
and 26th, respectively, along with their major performance improvement with
Casey dropping 1:11 off his P.R. and Mubark after already recording a major P.R.
on Tuesday came back two days later with another massive P.R. dropping :47 more
seconds.
9-15 - BCS Bridgman Jamboree
The week started this Tuesday, September 15 with the 1st Jamboree at
Bridgman. In this meet both the boy's and girl's teams didn't comparatively run
as well as they had the three previous meets. Nonetheless, the boy's and girl's
finished 4th in the league meet out of eight teams in the league.
There were some performances though worthy of Golden Shoe recognition with
Travon Blakely finishing 5th out 70 runners and clearly established himself as
one of the top runners in the league as well as Austin Salome finishing 15th and
also earning points towards end of the season All Conference Recognition.
Another runner of note was Mubark Hasan who finished 24th in 19:56 (1:20 below
his last season P.R.).
9-9 - Comstock Tri
On the boy's side, they were equally as impressive
with the top 5 runners for Comstock beating the White Pigeon team Top Runner
with Tanner Phares crossing the finish line less than .5 seconds ahead of White
Pigeon's best runner. Against Lawrence, Comstock also dominated being able to
place our Top 5 runners ahead of Lawrence's No. 3 Runner. Once again despite
Comstock's course being much tougher, two runners on the team Casey Nolan and
Tanner Phares managed to set new personal bests with Casey running 20:24 (21
sec. P.B.) and Tanner running 21:24 (20 sec. P.B.).
Lastly, I would like to award the Golden Shoe
awards but similar to the previous two races where the team ran exceedingly
well it makes it very hard to only single out a few runners, nonetheless, I
would like to give special recognition to these runners:
Casey Nolan (Setting a personal record and
providing a 1,2, 3 punch by being the 3rd runner ahead of Lawrence's 1st
runner)
Tanner Phares (Setting a personal record and
putting himself in position as the team's current No. 5 to break 20 minutes in
the next race)
8-27 - Marshall Invitational
The team ran exceptionally recording 8 lifetime P.R.'s out of the 11 that
ran with Austin Salome missing his lifetime P.R. by only 9 seconds.
On the boy's team without Travon running who was in Florida on a family
vacation the boy's team finished 6th out 7 teams in a strong field with three
runners under 20 minutes. In addition, Austin Salome who finished 12th in a
field of 95 runners with a time of 18:16 also received a medal for being the 6th
fastest while Senior Rush Rodwan smashed his lifetime P.R. that he set during
his Sophomore year by 51 seconds finishing in 19:36 followed closely by Casey
Nolan who hasn't run since 8th grade but still finished with a time of 19:51.
The only other two runners on the team Tanner Phares and Sam Perry both first
year runners also lowered their P.R.'s running respectively 21:44 (18 second
faster) and 25:16 (2:11 seconds faster) than the 1st race of the year.
8-21 - Lawrence Quad
Team Scores for the Boy's Teams