Back in late August, 5 teenage boys sat out on the patio of a teammate’s house in the suburbs of Richmond, Virginia, chilling after a tough five sets of a new 1000k/400m trail workout.  They told the stories on each other that all teenagers tell and between slap downs and laughs, the chill of ice pellets splashed and rippled the water as they took turns reloading the communal trash can ice bath that was being used to rejuvenate their tired legs. 

While it was the same casual junk that growing boys have been discussing for decades, this day was different and for the first time the jovial ribbing was interspersed with some motivational talk about the upcoming cross country season.    

This was the start of a new day and a new cross country season for Midlothian (VA) and at this point in time it felt quite different than all of the others.  The only constant from last year was change; new faces new talents, new personalities, new team dynamics…

And new expectations. 

And a new perspective about who they are and what it will take to successfully defend their multiple 2010 cross country championships and their national ranking that soared as high as 14^th.

Gone are ACC and Virginia Tech teammates Darren Barlow and Braden Burleigh who shared 3 trips to Portland’s NXN between them.  Also gone are VCU schoolmates Kyle Murray and runner Sam Hush.  Left are 2 juniors and a battle tested senior along with a slew of focused and hungry athletes eagerly awaiting their turn to be a part of the Midlo XC machine.  There are several new varsity faces to introduce in 2011 and for the Trojans the beginning of a season has never looked brighter for this crew of 21 harriers with 7 seniors.    

To many, Midlo over achieved and bullied its way into NXN last year despite decisive Virginia AAA state & NXN SE team championships.  Ask the hold over’s about last season and they’d tell you that the NXN trip was always a part of the grand plan; just like this year.  Even though they lost 4 seniors; 3 in the top 5, that just meant that they were going to have work a little harder at being recognized as a leading state, region and national caliber team. 

Ask them about the 2011 season so far and they’ll tell you that it too is coming together as planned; yet there is much left to do.

If you’re wondering where they’ve been hiding, don’t even bother wasting your time because you won’t learn much.  Unlike years past, Midlo v2011.0 didn’t earn enough respect to make the pre-season rankings of Mark Bloom’s top 25 or TrackTalk’s top 50.  The Richmond Times Dispatch’s pre-season feature story didn’t mention them and ESPN DyeStat left them out of their top 50 and then buried them as the lowly SE region #7 team.  Then both DyeStat and MileSplit US stayed consistent and refrained from acknowledging any Midlo boys for their individual national top 25 lists... 

Check out the rest at  http://www.xcnation.com/#!__midlothian