Ladue Invitational

After several relay and smaller meets, the Distance Track Spartans are finally entering the heart of the schedule. With our customary Parkway North Invite rolling today, we will be racing in the Ladue Invitational to avoid running on Good Friday.

We will be putting top guys in the 4x800 bright and early for the first time this season. The team will be made up of myself, Matt O'Connor, John Waller, and will be anchored by Brian Scherping. As Coach Traughber says, you always run faster with a baton in your hand, so the guys will be looking to run some fast times and start the meet off the right way.

Then we wait. Wait for the sprints. FINALLY we get to the mile. The Spartans will throw Junior Nick Martini and Super Freshman Prodigy Austin Del Rosso into the mix with some of the best runners in the state. I asked Austin if he was excited to run in a big time race, and if he had a strategy.

"I'm so excited. I'm just looking forward to hopefully running the fastest I'v ever ran. I will try and run my race and go all out."

This meet will include a JV distance medley relay. Sophomore Justin Potter will run the 1200 and Josh Goetz will run the mile. The team should have a good chance at the gold as they will be joined by two diaper dandies from the sprint side.

After some more sprints, Brian and I will run the open 800. Brian doubled in the mile and 800 last week and was in the top 3 of both events. I have not doubled yet this season, so I am interested to see how that goes. We ran a very tough workout together on Tuesday, so we should both be prepared to run two strong half miles.

Fresh off with signing ceremony, Kevin Abernathy will be joined by fellow Senior Jacob Seiler in the two mile. Kevin knocked out several workouts this past week and his feeling healthy. Jacob, always the leader of the workout, will run his race and be competitive.

Good luck to the Spartans tomorrow. Bring a drawer full of socks.

Holy Thursday

With no school, practice started at 9. For some guys this meant franticly running into the locker room at 8:59. For others who arrived early, it meant working on a new pre-practice fab—race walking. Apparently it’s all the rage.

We had some unexpected company on the warm-up. The Frisbee guys were at DeSmet for like the first time in a while taking advantage of some open field time on the DeSmet turf aka the YMCA. Former member of White Team Soccer, senior Anthony Marino joined us for a lap. He tagged out to fellow senior and b-tosser, Matt Silberberg for the next lap. Drew Ladage took the final stretch. Despite playing a sport that involves a fairly good amount of running, they didn’t seem too much enjoy one lap around the track.

Today, everyone was running to Conway Park. Some went straight there, others took Laduemont, and the top group had to run some 200s first before making the journey. Because of this I got to run with other people for more or less the first time all week. Instead of my normal company I ran with a group of mostly sophomores. It was pretty sweet!

On the run, the Locker Room Civil War that broke out last week heated up. For a reason that on one can remember the BLB (Back Left Bay) declared war on the FRB (Front Right Bay). Loyalties were questioned and bay members discussed strategy. The winner of this war may come down to whoever can make meaningful alliances and sheer determination.

Because it was Holy Thursday and we celebrate Christ’s Last Supper with his Apostles, we went to breakfast. Or maybe it was because we didn’t have school and we were hungry. Same thing. The two meals were pretty much identical. Well, expect that we were eating breakfast. And at First Watch, not Last anything. Oh and there were only 10 of us. Yea, not to mention that our meal has no impact on the course of human history. Ah, who cares; it was delicious.

Jerk!

Yesterday brought excitement off the track. Today, the excitement returned to the track with some excellent performances.

For starters there was a three man mile time trial at DeSmet. Senior Drew Higgins ran a season best 5:38, and freshmen Plassmeyer and Grapperhaus ran PRs finishing just behind Higgins. All three of them stuck together and pushed the pace throughout. Coach Traughber was very excited by the big drop. Great work guys! Keep it up!

The workout for Team Kevin was 8x800 at 2 mile pace. T-bone (accidently) used an interesting tactic to help me get through the workout. On the 5th 800, I wasn’t feeling great and coach said he got numbers confused and that I was only supposed to run 6. I finished the six and Coach said he was mistaken in change and that the workout should be 7-8 800s. So I ran number 7 which was my fastest. During my one lap of jog rest I decided I wanted to run 8 repeats like the plan was when the day started. Coach picked up the clipboard back up and I knocked out the last one. The mix up helped me get through the workout. It was getting really tough on number 5 and I wasn’t sure if I would make it. But taking the last 4 repeat-by-repeat gave me the mental edge I needed to have a great workout.

While this was taking place at DeSmet, the JV Spartans were at Webster getting ready to race. Many of them took after Higgins & co. and set PRs. In the mile, Michael Callahan led the way for DeSmet running a PR of 5:05. Sullivan followed right behind in a PR of 5:07. Jimmy Reed, after missing some time, ran a solid 5:19.

The 2 mile saw what is probably the best Distance Spartan performance of the year so far. Standout freshmen Austin Del Rosso was running his first career 3200. Was he nervous? Was he scared? It didn’t seem like it. Austin ran negative splits to win the race by 15 seconds. His time? 10:21 – the fastest time on the team this season. In the words of Coach Traughber: “ridiculous.” Also turning in great performances in the 2 mile were McGann and J. Potter. They both ran PR of 11:06.
Awesome races everyone!

Quote of the Day: “I came to practice to work hard.”- Kevin to Coach Traughber right after the workout.

Title: After Coach surprising changed the workout, I ran by Potter who I was giving updates too. I told him that about the change and said: “he’s such a jerk!”

Much More Than a Signature

Well before I knew which college I would attend, I decided that I wanted to run at the collegiate level. I could not imagine myself giving up what I have come to love so deeply. At that time, I was hoping that I would eventually have a signing day so that I could write about it on the Milk Table.

That long awaited day was today—Signing Day at DeSmet. About a month ago, I accepted a scholarship to run cross country and track at Drury University in Springfield, Missouri. At the same time I signed my formal National Letter of Intent which commits me to Drury for a year. Today, I signed a ceremonial letter to recognize and celebrate the continuing of my running career with the DeSmet community.

Drury is Division II and member of the Great Lake Valley Conference. This means that I will be conference rivals with two Spartans running at the collegiate level—Zach Boyle (‘10), Maryville & Andy McWhorter (‘09), Belermine. And maybe a third, depend ingon Scherping’s final decision. Drury made it to the national meet this past year, but is losing a handful of seniors. I’m excited to be a Panther, and hope to be part of the squad that brings them back to the biggest stage in college cross country. Here’s to 4 great years of college running.

It was a cool event that I really enjoyed. Mr. Fober and Mr. Luecke organized the signing which took place in the Emerson Lobby. In the presence of my family, friends, and teammates, Mr. Luecke talked about my accomplishments at DeSmet, running and non-running. He blew me away with all the good things he had to say. I just wasn’t expecting anyone to get up and talk about all I have done. It really meant a lot to me. Very special. I signed my letter and then the photo session began.
I want to thank my parents who have helped and supported me. I want to thank my teammates who make it all worth it. I want to thank my coaches who have made it all possible. I want to thank my friends, especially those who attended the signing. I want to thank everyone else who has support me during my career. I want to thank you to Mr. Luecke & Mr. Fober for organizing the great event. And lastly I want to thank DeSmet for everything this wonderful place and community has given and done for me. You guys all rock!!! Thank you so much!

As for practice, I was Team Kevin so had a 75 minute free run. I started it off by running with the sophomores and freshmen who had either a Mosley or Mailbox before their meet or time trail tomorrow. It was a lot of fun to get out there with the younger guys.

The guys who went long yesterday had a workout today. Scherping and Potter were doing a specialized 800 workout. Martini, O’Connor, Seiler, and Waller had cruise intervals and 4x200s. Word on the street was the Nick and Matt had their best workouts of the year.

Quote of the Day: “Did you guys text each other last night and plan to wear inverse colors?”- Coach Poelker. I had a black shirt and red tie. Coach Traughber had a red shirt and a black tie. He asked me in the hallway if we planned it. We didn’t, but that doesn’t make it not awesome.

Best Dressed: Austin. For starters, he got in on the well executed theme of Drury black and red for today’s practice. Also he went “flower power”—dandelion on the ear for the run. It’s the next big thing. Bigger than tapped wrists. Many guys were against it, but Austin wore it with pride and understood that you have to be different to look good. On top of all that, Austin went out of his way to touch the sign today. A true Spartan move.

Veto!

Starting off another multi-group/multi-meet workout week the Spartans split up in order to divide an conquer. Today's blog post will be focused around the Ladue team top group (minus Kevin) who had a 75 minute free for all run around Creve Coeur. This being said, if anything blog worthy goes on in other groups, make a move, write something up and email it to us to be posted!

Today's run has been dubbed Exploratory Mission: Ballas and Beyond. We were required to check in with coach back at DeSmet every 30 minutes turning into two out-and-backs on Ballas.

The first, much to Scherping’s confusion took us south farther than we had ever ventured before (past Conway road) before heading back to base. It would have been simple enough had the traffic not been out to get us the entire day as we crossed many streets and intersections. This was no problem however after many traffic and street crossing safety demonstrations and lessons by Coach Traughber over the years, because remember, in Car vs. Runner, the car always wins.

After paying a visit to the hydration station back at school we headed out for round two going north on Ballas across Olive and into the great beyond where none of the runners had ventured before. Eventually running into a fork in the road, we took it, heading into a neighborhood providing fresh and entertaining sights and street names as we wandered through the great beyond (on pace of course).

Navigating through various apartment structures, and a young girl who decided to hiss like a cat at us, adding another hubcap to Martini’s auto repair shop, we scoured the hilly landscape until it was time to head home again.

After another easy 15 minutes and some “real” hill sprints the Spartans called it in for some turf stretching and recapping the day’s events. Truly a run to remember.

Quote of the day: “I’ll follow my nose!” – Brian Scherping’s attempt at choosing a path to take at another fork in the road, while looking for a path into the woods.

Title: With many ideas being thrown out for what to do today I made use of a new catch phrase to shut down bad/goofy/impossible/dangerous/lame ideas.


Happy Holy Week!

- Padre