Varsity Highlights
The Gabriel Richard Invitational's course does not a produce many PRs - too many hills and fairly sharp turns - and times often run 10-15 seconds slower than usual.  This year the weather was sunny and dry and the temperature was unseasonably warm, near 70 °F at race time, which caused dehydration problems for a few runners (not Pioneers) out on the course and, for the first time all season, the large Pioneer water jug was completely drained long before the bus left for home!
 
The Pioneer Varsity got a good start at the starting gun and purple and white soon became the dominant color at the front of the pack.  The first mile was fast!  It wasn’t long before Pioneer's senior captain Dan Culbertson and Saline’s Brian Conn began to pull slightly ahead of the main group of front runners. They raced the course nearly side-by-side – not surprising, since these two have been trading places at meets all season.  Even so, Dan appeared strong and confident, while Saline's man appeared to be working very hard to keep up the pace.  The duel ended when Dan shifted gears and kicked ahead as Conn tired and the finish line approached.  That kick earned Dan a four second margin of victory as he took first place with a time of just 15:48.9 seconds, less than 2 seconds off his PR and an excellent time for this course.  Congratulations Dan, on your first individual first place this season!
   
Juniors Nathan Karr (16:15.9), Nick Kern (16:16.8) and Adam Kern (16:19.8) showed Pioneer's strength as they ran in tight formation a few seconds behind the dueling seniors virtually the whole course.  Their overwhelming presence at the front of the pack seemed to discourage the competition: their nearest opponent finished over 11 seconds behind Adam!  Congratulations on your finish places - 3^rd, 4^th and 5^th - as well as your outstanding teamwork.
 
Some real action seemed to be taking place a bit further back.  Junior Andy Sanz-Guerrero claimed 8^th place to round out the Pioneers' score with a finish time of 16:33.9, just a half-second behind Clarkston's first man.  Pioneer's sixth man, senior co-captain David Wallington captured 9^th place for the Pioneers.  David's finish time of 16:45.1 was 2 seconds ahead of Clarkston's 2nd finisher, another testament to the Pioneer team's depth this season.  Junior Joe Frakes didn’t get off to as good a starting position as some of his teammates, yet he steadily moved forward during the race to finish in 17:10.1 for 16^th place finish, right behind a string of five Hornets.
 
With six men in the top ten and amazing low team score of only 21, Pioneer's Varsity once again showed why they are the #1 team in Michigan!