Or you can go check out some of our other coverage like the most Improved Athletes from State or vote on the best performance from the state meet:

Most Improved Boys | Most Improved Girls

Boys Best Performance Vote | Girls Best Performance Vote

Ok. On to the recaps. 4A was loaded this year and some really strong individuals and teams got left off the podium that would have otherwise been there. 

4A Boys 

Before we dive in, can we all appreciate just how epic Cambridge's pre race chant is? Those who know me know that I prefer a much more low key pre race chant. Just my personality. But I do think Cambridge wins when it comes to pre race. For those of you who don't know, it goes something like this: kid A - "What doesn't kill you makes you stronger!" and then kid B responds with - "Except for Bears!" and the whole team joins in with "Bears will always kill you!" It's clever, funny, and most likely motivating all at the same time. Kudos to you bears. 

Ok, on to the race. This one lived up to the hype. It played out almost exactly as you expected it to with Cambridge trying to beat Marist despite not being as strong up front. the only way to do that is to offset the points that your opponent gets with a deep team. And that's exactly what Cambridge had, depth. Marist ran well at 4-5 too. It's not like they had a bad day or anybody lost the race for them. Sometimes the other team just runs better. And that's exactly what I think we saw from Cambridge. At the end of the day when you have two really good teams going head to head like this, somebody has to win. And Cambridge got the dub this time. What impressed me most from Cambridge is not how their 4-5 ran, which is about what you'd expect. But it's the fact that they were able to minimize how many points they lost at 1-2-3. We knew Marist had the talent up front to score very few from the beginning. But Cambridge was able to slot their top guys in fairly close behind them going 6-7-11. I think that's what got them the win. Minimizing the bleeding was clutch. As for the final two podium spots, there were really 5 other teams who all legitimately had a shot. And again, they all ran well! Nobody ran truly had a poor performance. you can nit pick stuff here and there ad I'm sure there are kids and coaches who left Carrollton wanting more. But at the end of the day, there are only four trophies to give out. And I think 4A did a great job of showing the kind of juggernaut it is. It's arguably the hardest classification to get on the podium. There are some kids and teams who ran great races and got left off, and that's a good thing for the sport long term. When the dust settled it was Westminster and Starrs Mill who took 3rd and 4th, separated by only two points. They ran even enough most of the way but in the end it was a stronger 5th man from Westminster who sealed the deal for them. 

Individually this was Tommy Latham's swan song. you never know how a kid on that level is going to race at state. Truthfully he could run the race however he wanted to, it didn't matter. But I'm not surprised he took his shot at the course record for this layout. He was out quick and clearly going for it. It was just too warm this weekend for anybody to run very fast on this course. Would have been interesting to see what he did in better conditions, but he was still able to cap off his senior year with yet another elite performance. One of the countless things he's done to wow all of us over the years. In 2nd place Andrew Stricklin showed that his elite races this season were not a fluke. He can run with almost anybody in Georgia, and he showed that with a strong race against an elite field last weekend. Not much more to say about his improvement this year, so I'll just point to the fact that he ran this race the way you want to. Patience the first lap and just looked strong and dominant the 2nd lap. The same is true for Loden Kohrman who also saved his best race of the year for last. He kind of ran with Stricklin the whole way and just couldn't quite hang on in the very end. Jacob Jacquot was also with them as they formed a trio for much of the race, and you never knew until the very end who was going to end up on top. But the big kick, which shouldn't come as a surprise, came from Liam Hanemann who charged hard from the band field to the finish picking off multiple guys on his way to a 5th place finish getting Marist off to a great start. Rounding out the podium were Francisco Palacios-Rodriguez and Yan Berezitsky from Cambridge who placed 6th and 7th, Nate Pacetti in 8th, Abdeleselam Kerebo in 9th, and Liam Loughead in 10th. 

4A Girls 

On the girls side Marist girls were here to do Marist things. The winningest girls program in state history notched another win here. But the big story of this race was that their top runner was seen in a boot at sectionals and then again in a boot before and after this race. Whatever caused her to be in that boot, it takes a tremendous amount of toughness to run through that pain on race day as she was visibly limping out there on the course. In the end though, they wound up being so good that they didn't even need her, as they would have won even if she was a DNF of DNS. Really their 3-6 runners won them this race as all four of them looked like they had their best race of the year at the state meet, which is the perfect time to do that. It's not surprising, but it's still impressive. Then after that the battle was on for the final 3 trophies. And this was the hardest race of the weekend to get a trophy. Not only were there 6-7 teams who all had a shot here, there was reason to believe before the race that there were 6-7 teams who could win the whole thing. Marist quieted that fairly early as they won pretty easily, but don't let that fool you. 4A girls was the fastest and deepest classification of this meet, and this thing was wide open. In those scenarios somebody has to win and somebody has to lose, and unfortunately we only give trophies to the top four teams. Harris Co. continued to do the things that made them great all season long and took state runner up with what was easily their best race ever. I also saw their top runner limping after the race so I'm sure they'll have some "what if" questions to take away from this one. But it doesn't take away from the great season they had. The final two podium spots went to Westminster in 3rd and Northview in 4th. Westminster saved their best race for last and really showed up big when it counted most. Northview has been here all season long and finished what they started by placing two girls very high in the race and holding on as best as they could for the final trophy. 

Individually this thing had lots of twists and turns. And it still has some questions now that it's over. I'm not exactly sure what happened to Zahara Bernal who opened up a big lead early and looked strong doing it, but I'm going to chalk this up to the weirdness of racing at 2:45pm on a Saturday, something they don't do at any point during the season. It was warm, sure, but my bigger guess is that nutrition played a role for several athletes in this one. It's just a tricky thing to figure out and get right when you don't have much practice. And of course there are the nerves of sitting around all day waiting for the race. But Bernal at one point fell on the road crossings as something was clearly wrong. Kudos to her for getting up and still finishing the race, as she held on for an 8th place finish. Which meant that our state champion in class 4A ended up being Regina Michel Camacho. And my favorite thing about this one was that you could just hear the pure surprise and joy in her voice during her post race interview with the announcer. She had a very strong season, but you could tell this win meant alot to her as she looked strong the entire way. It was a very impressive performance and a well deserved win. Speaking of impressive, both Lucy Johnson and Harriet Blaha had their best race of the season at state as well as they finished 2nd and 3rd, respectively. They formed a trio with Ella Alberici for most of the race and just pulled away from her in the end. Meanwhile Lauren Skeens sat in the next pack for most of the race and pulled away in the end to take 5th place. Also finishing on the podium were London Ray in 6th, Caroline Rogers in 7th, Grace Danser in 9th and the surprise of the meet where Addie Locker took 10th.