Sep 19, 2025

The cross country season usually gets off to a more low key start as teams kind of test the waters at some more low key invitationals. And you rarely get large amounts of top teams in one meet until this weekend. There are multiple out of state meets that are really solid tests against really tough competition. But the first true big meet in the state of Georgia each year is the Wingfoot XC Classic. And it's a unique race that saves the best races for last on a Saturday night, pumping up the crowd with a DJ and everything under the lights in Cartersville.

Trying to write a preview for a meet like this is...basically impossible. So many things can happen in a meet this dense that it's hard to know how the team scores will shake out. There are years that the favorite had 3 scorers fall 400m in. There are countless examples of a team being projected at 2nd and finished 17th or vice versa. I have no clue how these team scores will shake out. And while it's helpful to look at the virtual meet here , even that is going to be very skewed this time of year based on who has run a fast course and who hasn't. We also just simply don't have enough data at this point in the year to know who is capable of performing in a big environment like this and who is not ready yet. We should have a slightly better idea by Asics, but Coach Wood will likely be our best indicator of the all class team situation as that meet has become the de-facto end of the regular season and it's why we all love it.

So instead I'll keep my attention on the individual races as those are often much more interesting in a field like this. And based on the historical data, the front of the race is the part to pay the most attention to.

Historic Wingfoot Times

The boys race will likely end up being the more up in the air race. I'm going to attempt to cover all of the contenders, but odds are I'll miss somebody. I'm certainly most intrigued by Lucas Johnson, who has to be considered the favorite coming in. The problem is that there's not much to go on as he's not raced against too many Georgia boys yet this year. He's gone under 15:00, but it's hard to know much about that course versus other courses that have been run. Still, Johnson won the 3200 at the Atlanta City games, so if you're overlooking him just because he's not from the metro area, that's a mistake. Really if you've not been paying attention to Westminster Augusta recently, that's a mistake. I think his biggest challenger among Georgia runners is probably Cameron Collier, Witt Windham, or Jacob Jacquot. Collier was really impressive at Starrs Mill, Windham is undefeated so far this year and has run well, and Jacquot still does have the pedigree of a kid who ran 9:12/4:12 last spring, even if he's not off to the best possible start so far. Any of those guys could come away with the win here, and I believe all of them have strong kicks. We've seen some epic final 200m battles on this course before, I wouldn't be surprised to see it happen again this year. Other runners who I could see challenging for the top 5 on a big day include Eric Robinson, Samuel wood, Johann Brink, Walker Elrod, and Jackson Hunter.

On the girls side I don't expect much of a battle for the win. So the intrigue here will really be to see how fast Averi Lowen will run. Will it be a time trial or will somebody go with her? I lean towards the former, but you never know. Either way, I expect Lowen to push the pace in pursuit of a new PR. She has completely re-written what we thought was possible. She's not quite there yet, but she's pretty darn close to achieving GOAT status for a Georgia girl runner. If she runs another PR, that might do it considering she's already gone 16:52. Wingfoot can be a fast course, but nobody questions it's legitimacy. It can be fast, but you gotta work for it. Behind her I think the virtual meet is fairly accurate and I expect the top 10 to shake out fairly close to that, give or take. Anybody can have a good day and anybody can have a bad day, so keep that in mind. But mostly I think it's fairly accurate, with maybe the exception that Ella Alberici will probably finish much higher than 9th. And I could see Lily Farrell vaulting herself in to the top 10 or top 5.