Cross Country

The Mathews High School cross country teams recently competed in a home meet at Beaverdam Park, which is located in Gloucester County and also home to the Gloucester cross country teams who also ran that day, except Gloucester is a much larger school (5A), and Mathews is a teeny tiny school (1A), so they weren't actually running against each other, just having home meets at the same time, and back in the 1700s Mathews County was part of Gloucester County until finally we got sick and tired of having to walk or catch a horse and buggy all the way to Gloucester Court House to go to Walmart  conduct business, so we decided to break away and do our own thing and ever since it seems like Gloucester just can't ever get over that, so it seems like ever since there's been a huge rivalry between the two counties and their high schools.

Here's the bottom line after all that:

A Mathews female runner and a Mathews male runner crossed the finish lines of their respective 5K races held at Beaverdam last week in Gloucester County well before a Gloucester runner, so we win.

Any questions?

If you do have questions, particularly about how a cross country meet is actually scored, just stifle them and move on to my next train of thought, it's way easier that way, for both of us.

Anyway.

The second bottom line to this post is the Mathews cross country teams are doing exceedingly well and even if team scoring were explained here, they'd still come out on top in this meet that wasn't against Gloucester even though they ran simultaneously.

(If you aren't exhausted by this, you might want to consider taking up long distance running.  If you are exhausted by this, welcome. Just know we won.  The End.)

Beaverdam in Gloucester is our home course, and, yes, parts of the course border water (a pond).

Chesapeake Bay Daughter

On the flip side, part of that same course runs right through a parking lot.

No matter, it's all good.  

Especially WHEN MATHEWS RUNNERS BEAT GLOUCESTER RUNNERS.

(Not that there is any deep-rooted, competitive rivalry dredged up by studying these photos.  No,  I'm not reliving ugly basketball games where I came off the court bleeding because of unnecessary scrapping beneath the basket for rebounds in a Hunger Games form of showcase match that didn't even count because Gloucester High School was ten times the size of Mathews High School, but we still had to play them to prove something because (a) the whole rivalry thing and (b) the bus ride isn't as long as to Northumberland or Northampton or Essex.  For example.)

This is the last leg of the race, and as you can see(!), Mathews has not one but TWO runners ahead of the first Gloucester runner in red.
Riley Betz, our first place runner, came in at 21:53. She's a ninth grader.

Chesapeake Bay Daughter

The boys did an incredible job too.  Justin Adams, the first Mathews runner on the left and the first runner of the race to cross the finish line, completed this 5K course in 16:58.  It was hours a while before a Gloucester runner came across the finish line.

In summary, as a human being of this planet (as opposed to a human being who grew up in Mathews with the built-in competitive spirit against Gloucester),  I am happy for all of the runners regardless of their team affiliation. It takes a lot of courage to run long distance.

Although Mathews is a teeny tiny school, we have some darn fine runners.

Congratulations to them all.