State Champs!

At yesterday's UHSAA State Championships, Pine View XC came home with a 1st place for the 4A Girls and 2nd place for the 4A Boys.
Last week's Region 9 Championships were a bit of a disappointment in some ways, so this week's focus was really on the team tactics it was going to take for us to do our best at State.  A renewed focus was placed on being our best as a team and individually no matter the place.
Before getting into the race recap, we want to give a huge congratulations to Jacey, Carson, and Alex on achieving Academic All-State!  This is an enormous achievement in XC that shows a tremendous dedication to school as well as running - the GPA of every group was 4.0. 
We came into the season with high hopes for the girls team.  We were returning nearly everyone off of our state championship team and were adding an excellent Freshman class.  However, as in life, not everything went according to plan and the year was a little tougher than we may have liked.  However, at the same time, the peaks and valleys of the season provided us many opportunities for growth and improvement; and when it mattered most, those lessons paid off.  Throughout the race, every girl had a time or two where she had to dig very deep and overcome the difficulties of racing - and in the end, each girl responded with strength and courage.  Jessica finished 5th (4th scorer) in a new school record time of 18:22.6! (She was the 2nd quickest Sophomore of the entire State meet.)  She was followed by 4A's fastest Freshman Alli who finished in 12th at 19:05.  Soon after Alli, we placed our next four finishers: Caroline - 15th, 19:09; Ellie - 16th, 19:15; Rylee - 17th, 19:23; Jacey - 19:24.  Our 7th finisher, Sylvia, finished in 34th with a 20:03 and was 1 position out of beating every team's 5th runner.  This was our best team race of the season... our tightest spread (1:01) and tied our fast team time ever 1:35:16 (from last year).
The boys started their race very strong.  At the top of the first hill, we were running very controlled in the front of the chase pack with 4 runners together and all 7 within a few seconds of each other.  As the race progressed, our pack spread, but once again each runner stepped up to the challenges of the day.  Julien ran his best race of the year and finished 9th (7th scorer) in a time of 16:01.  Carson hanged in well on a tough day and finished 14th with a 16:08.  Alex was 19th with a 16:16.  And Nathan and Spencer each had a strong push in the final mile to move up to 28th and 29th in 16:29.  Logan was 38th in 16:39, and Dylan finished 59th in 17:08.  Coming into the race, everyone knew that this was going to be the toughest team title of the day.  There were at least five teams with legitimate shots at winning and the title would go to the team that could bring it together the best on this given day.  Our spread of 27 seconds was one of our best boys groupings ever, but it just wasn't quite enough to overcome Stansbury's 17 second pack.  Nonetheless, it was a very good race from our boys... we took home a trophy for the 3rd straight year, had one of our top 3 team times ever, and were able to beat our rival for the first time in 5 years at State.
We are so proud of all we accomplished this year so far.  The Rowdies were absolutely awesome!  We were the loudest, most notable team at the meet without a doubt.  The Panthers who came up and supported us were amazing!  And the family support was the best!  That's why PVXC is the greatest thing out there. 
Now... enjoy the moment as we continue to work to improve.  There is always more work to do.  One great moment begets the next.
Boys Results
Girls Results
Deseret News
St. George News
The Spectrum