Festival of Champions

After two years of canceled trips to the Festival of Champions due to COVID-19 restrictions, Brodi Robinson and I could not have been more excited to bring this group of seven KES students to Belfast, Maine the weekend of October 1-2. Click here to get an idea for the size of these races.

 

Our day got off to a great start (as seen in the video above) with second-year, cross-country runner August Henrici ‘23 and rookie Wesley Oulton ‘25. The start line holding 351 ready-to-go runners spans more than the width of a football field and narrows to about 10 metres shortly after the end of the football field. Many are happy just not to fall down. As they will each admit, the first three kilometres of the five-kilometre races fly past because you are so busy just trying to stay on your feet. August ran our five-kilometre home course in 27:23, and on Saturday he ran this five-kilometre course much faster in 24:44. Wesley covered our five-kilometre course in 23:22, and this weekend the same distance set him back 23:45.

 

Carlos De Los Santos ‘27 was nervous before the start, but he overcame his nerves and had a fantastic race on Saturday, giving his best effort for his first five-kilometre race. His very first cross-country race was this past week on our home course, but that was a little bit less than three kilometres. Not to be intimidated by the 300 other runners in his race, Carlos finished very strongly in 22:31.

 

Our top performing boy, Vinnie Armstrong ‘25, finished 174th out of 678. Vinnie completed our home course in 19:58 but kept a greatly even pace to lower his personal best to 18:48. Unlike a lot of runners who blasted out of the gate, Vinnie kept his calm and was able to continually pass people throughout the race. However, I think that he really wants to return next year and finish at least 100 places higher. With training, that is certainly a possibility. This time moves Vinnie to #2 KES all-time, just 10 seconds ahead of Luis Espinosa '19, and Luis went on to win two gold medals in track and field.

Ana Paula Valencia ‘26 desperately wanted to race this weekend, but after a gentle course jog on Friday night, she quickly realized that it was better to rest and recover from an injury that has been nagging her. However, she did not rest her lungs or her camera on Saturday. She yelled and cheered until she could barely talk – and she took hundreds of photos. The biggest focus of her cheerleading went to her fellow cross-country teammates of María José Pedroza ‘27 and Renata Villanueva ‘29. Like Carlos, these two had run their first cross country race just a few days earlier, and that was about half the distance! This was a long five-kilometre race that they were facing. Not only that, but particularly in the girls race that they were in, it can be more than a bit scary because many of them seem so “serious”. However, Maho and Renata supported each other the entire length of the course; they were not about to leave one another. They both finished their race in the same time, 29:31. I have absolutely no doubt that if they stick with cross country and continue training, they can lower that by many minutes.  

 

It was a very exciting weekend, and I hope that next year Mr. Robinson and I take all of these runners and many more.