Hi again everyone. Here's the next edition of the Newport XC "newsletter." Again - it's lengthy. Skip to what you want or read it all, it's up to you. And keep in mind that, although I'd like to mention every kid, we have a huge team and this is already super long. I will however try to spread the mentions out, especially for kids who work hard and improve.

REMINDERS:
- It is school policy that if we take a bus to a meet students may only travel to and from the meet with their own parent or another parent with a note from home. Athletes cannot drive themselves or other athletes. Also, please be sure you check in with the coaches prior to leaving a meet with family - we don't like to worry that we've lost athletes!!!
- Athletes also must be in attendance at school in order to participate in practice or in races.
- Cards or numbers received at the finish of the race - some races will give athletes a card or number at the end of the race to indicate their finishing position - make sure you hang on to these and give them to your coaches. They are used for scoring!!!!

SOME GREAT RESULTS FROM LAST WEEK:

Sammamish/Skyline Meet:
Last Wednesday we had a great first League Meet against Sammamish and Skyline.

The Newport girls won both meets with their incredibly tight pack of five girls up front. Jillian Altizer, Christine Dollard, Lydia Ngai, Dana Dixon and Natty Plunkett all finished within 20 seconds of each other to totally shut out Sammamish (they had a PERFECT SCORE of 15 points), and handily beat Skyline. It's always a great feeling to start the season with 2 wins! More importantly, all of our girls ran terrific races, and we had several packs of Newport girls out there working together and pushing each other to succeed.

On the boys side, our scoring 5 of Alex Jeffers, Dan Doperalski, Neil Baunsgard, Alex Poplawski and Nick Ling ran very tough races. They beat Sammamish, but lost to a very strong Skyline team. However, we ran without Dan Hutchins and Brent Magnusson, who needed to miss the race to prevent sore legs from becoming serious injuries. With the addition of those two very strong runners, we hope to go after Skyline at the Kingco 3A Championship Meet in October. It's really exciting to see more and more boys run fast - it's a sea of red out there during these races!

On Friday at practice the coaches recognized 2 athletes who made particularly strong improvements at this meet: Tia Nichols and Steven Soroka ran great races!

THANK YOU to all of the family members and friend who attended the meet. It was amazing to have that much support for the athletes on the course!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Salt Creek Invitational:
We had a great, although tiring trip to Port Angeles this weekend for the Salt Creek Invitational. Our girls varsity placed 3rd as a team, with that same top 5 all running within 42 seconds of each other. They all ran incredibly well during the second half of the race - in fact Natty Plunkett probably passed about 30 girls after the first mile. Lindsay Brooks also ran her best race of the year so far as a really strong #6 and Kacey Koopmans ran very well to round out the varsity team.

Our varsity boys finished 5th. Dan Doperalski, Alex Jeffers, Dan Hutchins, Neil Baunsgard, Brent Magnusson ran great races and had a 33 second spread from 1-5. Brent's race was particularly courageous considering the fact that he missed over 2 weeks of running to nurse some sore shins. We're awfully glad to have him back!!! Jacob Dance also ran a very good race for our #6, and Alex Poplawski ran very tough in spite of feeling sick.

Our JV girls finished 5th overall in their race. Katrina England had an awesome race, finishing 7th overall as an individual and getting her first XC medal!

Our JV boys finished 6th overall. Andrew Coover and Nick Ling ran awesome races and placed 7th and 8th for medals.

Finally, and probably most importantly, Sam Staples finished his first Smitty Burger at Fat Smitty's on the way home. While Sam certainly didn't set any time records, and had us worried for a while, he toughed it out and finished! Sam couldn't have done it without stellar coaching by Blake Siegwarth-Murphy. (By the way, Sam and Blake are also running great).

OTHER MISCELLANEOUS INFO FOR FAMILIES AND ATHLETES:

Racing Shoes: In general, the shoes typically used to race cross country are made to be lighter and with less cushioning than training shoes. They are made to help a runner run faster an more efficiently while racing. Not all runners need them. Beginners are usually fine running in their training shoes. However, as athletes become more serious about the sport, it is helpful to have the right equipment. There are two basic types - flats and spikes.

- Spikes are racing shoes that have 6-7 holes under the forefoot where you can literally screw in metal spikes. The spikes offer more traction on wet or muddy surfaces. On track spikes the "spike plate" under the forefoot will usually be hard plastic. They are sometimes lighter, but often have less cushioning, and the hard plastic spike plate is inconvenient on XC courses where there is a lot of pavement that would make it better to wear the shoes without the metal spikes in them. XC spikes still have holes to screw the metal spikes in, but have a rubber surface under the entire shoe. They can be worn with or without the metal spikes in them. (Sprint spikes should absolutely be avoided - they are very light but have no cushioning under the heel - very bad for a 5k race). Here's an example of XC spikes.

- Flats are racing shoes without spike holes. They are still really light and great for racing. (Nike calls these shoes "waffles" b/c of the waffle like surface of the outsole). These shoes are great for most XC racing, but don't have great traction on wet, muddy courses. (Once in a while a shoe company will refer to XC spikes as flats b/c of the rubber outsole). Here's an example of flats.

- Spikes and flats run the range of reasonable to extremely expensive. In XC the expensive ones just aren't necessary. In fact, it's often possible to find clearance models for $20-30 if you know your size on websites like Eastbay or Road Runner Sports. Otherwise, Super Jock 'n Jill or other running stores will have lots of options.