Yesterday was a fun one to watch. If you saw the leaders in the race finish - that was exciting! We had
Ava and Campbell in that lead pack the last 800 meters and they took off with about 300 meters to go. I
loved the way Campbell challenged Ava - what courage!!! Ava accepted the challenge and the 2 finished
neck and neck to take the 1-2 spots! I am happy with this group of girls and excited about getting them
on my high school team next year.
8th Grade Crew with Thomas Valles from the Disney movie McFarland USA (far right).
Carly Littlefield
WSMS Boys XC 8th Grade District Champs!
Our 8th Grade Boys capped off their undefeated season yesterday with another win and the District
Championship! This has been a special group of young men to work with and all of their hard work and
dedication was on full display yesterday. You can view full results HERE.
What a day! I am pretty amazed by our girls today. Lots of great races... but even better is the way
they compete and challenge themselves. We dominated the field and scored only 18 points! (15 is a
perfect score!) All of these girls had a really special season. I have enjoyed watching their growth,
and I hope they had a great experience with Cross Country! It's not always easy ... it's a lot of
"behind the scenes" work, but the reward of achieving your best is so awesome. I'm looking forward to
the future with them! It was also cool to see several of the 8th graders out there supporting them!! It
will be their turn next Tuesday!
It will be crucial that all runners run over the Thanksgiving break. It is very tempting to not run
and be lazy over holiday breaks. When we return the 7th graders will have their district
championship and 8th graders a week after. Results will show if a runner takes off over the break.
To help motivate and keep our runners accountable, Coach Kelly and I will offer two voluntary
practice sessions for the middle school group over the break.
STRONGER. FASTER. TOUGHER.
Carly Littlefield
WSMS Boys XC Update
Our 8th Grade boys won the meet! Our 2nd team of boys would have placed 2nd overall! This shows the
depth and strength of our 8th grade team. Very impressive indeed.
See results HERE.
[Editor's note: the results were cleaned up to score properly and reclaim a Lovejoy runner improperly
assigned to a Rockwall school.]
I am super excited about getting this 8th grade group of boys running in high school next year. Fun Fact
about the Boys XC Team at LHS. We currently have the 2nd longest consecutive streak of State
Championship appearances as a Boys Team out of all UIL Schools in the State 1A-6A. The Lovejoy boys have
qualified for the State Championship for 13 years in a row now. The only other program to top that is
the legendary The Woodlands team with a streak of 42! This 8th grade boys group will hopefully help us
increase our streak to at least 17 over the next four years.
It will be crucial that all runners run over the Thanksgiving break. It is very tempting to not run
and be lazy over holiday breaks. When we return the 7th graders will have their district
championship and 8th graders a week after. Results will show if a runner takes off over the break.
To help motivate and keep our runners accountable, Coach Littlefield and I will offer two voluntary
practice sessions for the middle school group over the break. See below for details.
Thanksgiving Break Workouts
11.21.20 - Saturday - Off
11.22.20 - Sunday - Long Run on Your Own
11.23.20 - Monday - 2-3 Mile Tempo Run OR Fartlek Workout 1 Min On / 2 Min Off X 10 - You
choose!
11.24.20 - Tuesday - Recovery Run on Your Own: 20-30 Minutes + 4 Buildups
11.25.20 - Wednesday - Optional Practice @ 9:30 AM at Celebration Park. Meet on the East side
of the park near the duck pond. If you can not make the workout: 2 X 800M , 4 X 400M
11.26.20 - Thursday - Recovery Run on Your Own: 20-30 Minutes + 4 Buildups
11.27.20 - Friday - Optional Practice @ 9:30 AM at Celebration Park. Meet on the East side of
the park near the duck pond. If you can not make the workout 6 X 400M, 4 X 200M
11.28.20 - Saturday - Off
11.29.20 - Sunday - Long Run for 8th Graders / 20-30 Min Run for 7th Graders
Please let me know if you have any questions.
Thank you,
Logan Kelly cell: 903-821-8399
WSMS Girls XC Results
We had a FANTASTIC workout this morning; it was a very challenging one, and the girls did a great job!!
Our 7th graders raced on Wednesday and dominated the field by scoring a very low 18 points!! (15 points
is a perfect score in XC) This is a special group of girls; they are very competitive! The 8th graders
will get their shot next Monday!
I haven't received any official results yet from Rockwall but I am confident in saying our 7th Grade
Boys won the meet yesterday! We had a team score of 32 points.
What an awesome meet yesterday! Nearly all girls have improved drastically since the first meet! This is
a result of being consistent in training and learning how to push limits a little bit more each time.
(the cooler weather yesterday was also helpful!) I am very proud of the effort given by all of our
kids!
CLICK HERE for a spreadsheet
with each meet so far this year along with the time trial from early September. CLICK HERE for a
spreadsheet containing the top 20 best times run at WSMS since we've been running this course. (only
those who are still running in HS are listed on the top 20 list) As you can see, our current 7th and 8th
graders are putting a lot of names on this list!! This is awesome
— especially considering we have one of the top teams/programs in the State! It looks like a
bright future for LEOPARD XC!! These spreadsheets are also posted in the locker room so girls have a
reminder to set goals and go reach them!!! Congrats to Tatum Novicke on breaking the 13:00 minute mark!
This is a big milestone! We will have others joining her soon!
Next week we will do another 1 mile time trial to compare those times to the 1 mile time trial we
ran on 9.16.20. Thanks again to Jim McGuinness for the amazing pictures he takes of our
kiddos!!
Carly Littlefield
WSMS Girls XC Results
Lots of happy girls yesterday as many saw their times dropping and their training starting to pay off!!
I am most impressed with 2 things: 1) It was HOT!!! This is tough to adjust to, but the girls really
pushed through and stayed tough!! 2) We have been working on our form and finishes. Most of the girls
really showed improvement in the last 100 meters yesterday - better technique and giving everything they
had at the end of the race!! I'm loving the grit I'm seeing from this group!!
Girls finishing in the top 10 and earning a medal:
The Willow Springers continued their fall campaign with a tri-school meet that added the Coyotes of Anna
Middle School (Coach Kelly's alma mater) to the WSMS/HP field. The competition felt even more different
since Highland Park left most of its 8th graders home, but added several new 7th graders.
Perhaps the biggest difference was the weather: the 87° temperature for this meet had a noticeably
draining effect on some of the runners.
As with last week's meet, all the girls ran in a single race and so did the boys. CLICK HERE for the
official results.
For fairness sake, we've again divided the grades and re-scored. CLICK HERE for
the complete data set. Three of the four squads reduced the average time of their top-5 runners by about
20 seconds. That's a nice improvement in a week. The 8th grade boys maintained their dominance with a
perfect score of 15 points and a 1-5 average time of 11:35.16 — wow!
CLICK HERE for the photo album. Currently marquee photos only.
WSMS Girls XC Results/Update
What a great start for all of our runners yesterday!! That first race of the season is always a little
bit scary ... especially for the kids who are brand new to the sport. Cross Country is a very mentally
and physically demanding sport. It can be a roller coaster of emotions as you may have one amazing race
and the next week — not so much. It takes a lot of practice to become great at racing. I am very
proud of the way the kids competed and pushed themselves. We talked this morning about the importance of
learning and growing from each race. It's important to figure out what went well, what did not go well,
and how we can adjust and improve for the future races. We got some great feedback from our young
runners as they reflected on their races.
There may be a few of the girls mixed up a bit. When we do timing on the computer in a group/race of
that size, it can be difficult because there were 2-3 packs with about 8-12 girls lumped together so
it was difficult verifying if all of their times are exact as they all come in together and it isn't
chipped. But for the most part, they are pretty accurate. We will often pay to have a timing company
at our District meets against Rockwall, but we used a timing system for this since it's a Dual.
Coach Kelly does an awesome job with this; it is a VERY difficult and stressful job! When looking at
results, if you think your daughter is in the wrong place or you don't see her name, let me know and
we will see if we can figure it out. I know Sloane Hempkins was around 16:35-40 and placed higher
than on results and also Camryn Jones was missing from results and her time was 21:05.
Meet Next Week
We will run the same course again on Tuesday next week against Highland Park and Anna Middle
School.
Results by Grade
CLICK HERE for a
spreadsheet made by our longtime supporter Jim McGuinness. He broke down the races by gender and
grade. You will see that our 7th grade group had a perfect score in the 7th grade division! That is
hard to do!!! (It means taking the top 5 spots for a score of 15 points... and we had 7 in a row!!!
9 in the top 10!) The lower the score, the better in XC.
Carly Littlefield
WSMS XC Meet Results
Our boys did a great job yesterday competing and behaving well at the meet. The first meet is now out of
the way and hopefully each runner now knows what they need to work on and do differently for the next
race. Attend each workout and be willing to give your best effort each day and the results will
come!
We will run the same course again on Tuesday next week against Highland Park and Anna Middle
School.
Thank you,
Logan Kelly cell: 903-821-8399
Springers Get an Early Start
The Willow Springers kicked off the season early this year with a dual meet against the Scots from the
Highland Park Middle School. Fantastic runner weather and apparently fantastic spectator weather
—
probably the largest crowd of spectators ever for a Lovejoy middle school meet.
Another wrinkle today was the smörgåsbord racing approach adopted by the coaches: all the girls ran in a
single race as did the boys. So only two races with rather large fields. As such, the OFFICIAL GIRLS
RESULTS and the OFFICIAL BOYS
RESULTS are skewed towards the 8th graders. But it was sure nice taking photos with lots of
sunlight.
For fairness sake, we've gone ahead and divided the grades and re-scored. CLICK HERE for the complete data set. Here's a quick summary:
