Varsity Boys

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
1. Comstock 44 pts
2. Paw Paw 45 pts.
3. Lawrence 63 pts.
4 Hartford 85 pts.
Out of field of 31 runners individually the boy's finished:
2. Travon Blakely 17:52
4. Austin Salome 18:49
11. Casey Nolan 20:31
13. Rush Rodwan 20:43
14. Tanner Phares 22:02
27. Sam Perry 27:27

In the boy's race, Travon and Rush (Co-Captain) ran near their P.R.'s in the first race of the season while Casey, Tanner, and Sam competed in their first high school and ran exceedingly well. Austin the other Senior Caption on the team ran a very solid race moving up from 10th at the mile to finish 4th which help secure the team winning the race.