STATE

The State Meet, or Meet of Champions, is Saturday, October 30th at Masterson Station Park in Lexington. The Meet Director has changed the format from previous years. This year the races will be a 2K for 4th and under and a 3K for 5th and 6th graders in a separate race. Each race has a Champion race for boys and girls and 1 combined Open Race.

Since our boys won't have enough 5th graders to have a full team and our girls will only have enough for a team if all 5th graders attend, I've asked our 5th graders to make a decision on which race they'd like to enter. The Championship Race or the Open race. There are two ways to look at this. The Championship Race will allow our runners to run against the top 5th and 6th graders in the state. I can't imagine that the Open Race will have that many 6th graders in it so it will still be a good test of their running ability against other 5th graders. I'm ok either way. If I don't hear from our 5th graders or their parents by Tuesday's practice I will be entering them in the Open Race.

I will let all of our 2nd, 3rd, and 4th graders know which race they will run very soon. I can only enter 7 boys and 7 girls in the Championship Race. Everyone else will run in the Open Race.

Just so everyone knows, I'm NOT happy about this change at all. The KTCCCA has been very hesitant to change the structure of the State Meet ever since I've been involved in Cross Country even though MANY coaches have asked them to change. We've been asking them to make their meet 5th and under and have the 6th graders run with the 7th and 8th graders. The change they've decided to make only makes the problem worse in my opinion.