For those who love cross country, the season passes altogether too quickly. For those who run cross country, it may be a different story. In any case, we have arrived at the final weekend of invitationals.
The list of meets this weekend is comparatively short, but a short list means larger meets, and that's generally a plus.
Out in eastern New Mexico, Santa Rosa kicks things off with their invitational on Thursday. It's a quick exit to the invitational season with an extra day or two to rest up, heal up, or whatever up for district qualifying next week.
Los Alamos and Valley have staked out their territory on Friday.
Valley will host mostly APS schools at Mariposa Park. Figure on a good likelihood of some of the smaller Albuquerque-area schools making their way to this meet as well. For some teams, it will be a final sharpening before districts; for others it will be a chance to rest some team members with an eye toward the district qualifying ahead.
The meet that people from all around the Southwest region will be paying the most attention to takes place on the Los Alamos County Golf Course. You'll get 4A powers Los Alamos, Albuquerque Academy, and St. Pius X all on the same starting line before they go their separate ways to regionals. Also coming in to stir the fire a little are Cleveland, more or less the full set of Santa Fe schools, and a couple of smaller school programs like Pojoaque and Hope Christian. This one promises to be competitive, though perhaps just a little on the chilly side.
It will take a discerning eye to read the results of the Los Alamos meet. At something like 7000 feet, and over the grassy rises and falls of a golf course, this isn't a course that's going to run especially fast.
Saturday will wrap up the invitational season with meets at Ruidoso, Grants, and Kirtland Central. Once again, this isn't many meets for as many schools as have a spot on their schedule for this final weekend, so we should be seeing some well-attended meets this weekend.
By all means, take in a meet this weekend. Catch two of them if you can. Take a camera and share pictures on the site. Send in results! We'll post those as soon as we get them (allowing that the Saturday results may be a little delayed in posting due to Colorado's state meet taking place on Saturday).
And then, next week, the season starts playing for keeps.