The 2008 Oatlands Invitational turned out to be one of the most impressive high school events ever put together on Virginia grounds as Derek Farrey and Matt Oblas did a masterful job in not only assembling a mega meet with 101 schools including teams as far as New York and Colorado, but pulling it off on the day of as there were was absolutely no noticeable errors and shortfalls at all with the meet.
As a meet grows in size, the more complicated it can get and issues can easily arise, but this year's Oatlands Invitational showed little signs of that expectation with a very effieciently run meet. The course was a true cross country course with no pavement and nothing but grass, dirt, creeks, and hills which was wide enough to contest races with up to 500 competitors comfortably. The chip timing work done by the Run High group made the usual pending nightmare of chute management evaporate in thin air.
In year's past, the event has conflicted with the Maymont Festival in Richmond, another high caliber cross country event with a large draw of out-of-state teams. Both meets have been able to gather in fields over 100 schools competing this year. This year's Oatlands Invite was scheduled a week earlier and went up against the William & Mary Invite on the same weekend, which use to be the arguably the best and largest invitational in the state. The William & Mary Invite, celebrating its 50 year of existence as the longest running meet in the state, still held strong with over 50 schools, but the Oatlands Invite was easily the featured meet of the weekend.
It is reported that next year due to Jewish holiday on this same weekend will force the Oatlands Invite to move back to the last weekend of September to conflict with Maymont once again. As a webmaster of MileStat.com as well as a head coach of a cross country team, I will be deeply conflicted on which meet to attend as I think both are great events. Each event has plenty of strong pro's which make both enticing. The "extras" and attention to details for both events are what makes both meets far and beyond on another level than any other meets in the state of Virginia and quite possibly the entire Southeast region.
I'm really a big fan of the Oatlands Plantation course. It was my first time on the course this past weekend and I fell in love with it. State champions can definitely be made on this course. We do have some history at Great Meadow going back to the mid 1990's, but I want to see us have a state course that we can actually race on at some point during the season which will never happen unfortunately due to conflicts at Great Meadow. As another fellow Central Region coach noted at the meet, the access that the fans and spectators had at Oatlands to all areas of the course is what cross country is all about and our high school athletes feed off the energy that the crowd can provide them to fuel them during their races.
I want to personally thank Derek Farrey for allowing my team to compete in this year's event and want to give a full 100% endorsement of MileStat.com behind the Oatlands Invitational as I thought this was a top notch event that we should all feel proud to have within our borders to showcase the very best we have to offer in terms of competition and how to host a meet!