Now that we’ve had our post-season PGXC party with runners and family members, it’s time to share the highlights from the final season results. (To see the series results at Run4Results, select 23 for the year, click Individual, Teams by AG, or Cup, and then click Submit.)
First, as I noted at the party, I write these recaps because I think it’s important to celebrate the achievements of the talented athletes in our community. It’s healthier to run with or cheer for our local stars than to focus on random celebrities.
And I hope that sharing the enjoyment and mutual support of team running encourages more people to join our cross-country teams next year! The season may be over now, but if you get in touch, we’ll make sure you’re on the @pgxc-flrc or @pgxc-high-noon groups when we start organizing parties and races next year.
Finally, a big thanks to this year’s PGXC age-group captains for recruiting and building community around their teams: Molly Doruska, Jessica Daily, Julie Barclay, Sandy Gregorich, Banyan Love, Mik Kern, Tristan Lambert, Jesse Koennecke, Charlie Fay, and Carl Franck.
Club Cup
Most notably, the FLRC and High Noon teams combined to place a solid third in the overall PGXC Club Cup competition, our first time out of fourth place since the Club Cup started in 2018. This is a huge accomplishment given that we draw from a population base of about 100,000 compared to Buffalo’s (Checkers) 1,160,000, Rochester’s (GVH) 1,080,000, and Syracuse’s (STC) 650,000. In particular, check out the points we racked up in Race #3, our home race at TC3.
Team Placements
From the FLRC team standpoint, we had three particularly strong groups, the FLRC U19 co-ed team, the FLRC Super Vets (60-69) women’s team, and the FLRC Ultra Vets (70+) team, each of which won their category for the series.
- FLRC U19: 1st (yay!)
- FLRC Open: 2nd (tie with Syracuse B-team)
- FLRC Masters: 4th
- FLRC Vets: 2nd
- FLRC Super Vets: 1st (yay!)
- FLRC Ultra Vets: 1st (yay!)
Two of those places merit special mention. Cross country is a team sport, and if a team doesn’t field enough runners, it doesn’t score. Plus, the PGXC rules require teams to compete on championship day or they fall out of the scoring entirely. We had two runners—Hope Towle on Open and Nancy Lorr on Ultra Vets—whose individual places were far back in the pack, but whose presence ensured we had a team. Without Hope on championship day, the Open team wouldn’t have had a team and thus taken second overall, and without Nancy, we wouldn’t have even had an Ultra Vet team. In cross-country, everyone matters!
Special kudos to the FLRC Super Vets team, which was both fast and large, often allowing us to run one or more Super Vets down to another team that needed another runner for a full team, even while fielding the top team in the series.
It was a tougher year for the High Noon men’s teams. Despite our strong Open and Masters teams, the Syracuse and Checkers teams were just faster and deeper, dropping us to third overall in both categories. And despite having the first and third overall Ultra Vets runners, the shocking depth of other Ultra Vets teams—Syracuse fielded four three-man teams for two races and GVH had two teams!—knocked us to fourth overall.
- High Noon Open: 3rd
- High Noon Masters: 3rd
- High Noon Vets: No team on championship day
(would have been 3rd) - High Noon Super Vets: No team on championship day
(might have been 4th) - High Noon Ultra Vets: 4th
Individual Placements
It was a good year for our individual runners on either end of the age spectrum: three FLRC and High Noon runners brought home individual first-place awards for the series. Kate Hulsey won the women’s U19 division, Ruth Sproul topped the women’s Ultra Vets competition, and Charlie Fay placed first in the men’s Ultra Vets category. (And Banyan Love, had he not been off at a national mountain bike race in Maryland, would have won the men’s U19 division.)
The PGXC series awards go 10 deep after the overall winner of each category, so FLRC and High Noon ended up taking home 22 awards. Note that a perfect score is 80 points. They went to:
U19
- Kate Hulsey: 1st Women’s U19 (71 points)
- Gretchen Hulsey: 2nd Women’s U19 (62 points)
- Rahmon Daily: 2nd Men’s U19 (46 points)
- Ben Lambert: 3rd Men’s U19 (45 points)
Open
- Molly Doruska: 11th Women’s Open (15 points)
Masters
- Jessica Daily: 11th Women’s Masters (18 points)
- Dan Timmerman: 2nd Men’s Masters (54 points)
- Jay Hubisz: 6th Men’s Masters (33 points)
- Jordan Varano: 7th Men’s Masters (26 points)
Vets
- Julie Barclay: 2nd Women’s Vets (71 points)
- Brenda Osovski: 5th Women’s Vets (44 points)
- Jean-Luc Jannink: 8th Men’s Vets (26 points)
- Alan Filipowicz: 11th Men’s Vets (15 points)
Super Vets
- Sandy Gregorich: 2nd Women’s Super Vets (52 points)
- Gill Haines-Sharp: 4th Women’s Super Vets (45 points)
- Lorrie Tily: 6th Women’s Super Vets (42 points)
- Laura Helmerick: 7th Women’s Super Vets (42 points)
Ultra Vets
- Ruth Sproul: 1st Women’s Ultra Vets (77 points)
- Deb Bliss: 2nd Women’s Ultra Vets (54 points)
- Nancy Lorr: 5th Women’s Ultra Vets (33 points)
- Charlie Fay: 1st Men’s Ultra Vets (74 points)
- Joel Leff: 3rd Men’s Ultra Vets (51 points)
Congratulations to everyone, and thanks for a great season! Here’s looking forward to more runners doing even better in 2024.