Is history going to repeat itself?
Just six years ago a new face -- and a foreign transfer -- toed the line at Oatlands for her first 5K in the U.S., and that athlete turned out to be future Foot Locker Champion Weini Kelati.
This weekend on the boys side, we have a Hungarian transfer in Ferenc Kovacs running for Woodberry Forest.
Related Links:
Oatlands Meet Page - Virtual Meet - Teams Attending - Meet Records
Kovacs is a transfer to the prep school; he has already competed at the Ragged Mt Cup. In that relay race, he ran on fourth leg and crushed it with a meet record of 9:37 for the full two miles.
To put that in perspective, Jack Eliason of Western Albemarle ran 9:47 in 2019 and went on to run 15:05 that same season.
On top of that performance, Kovacs owns a personal best of 3:54 for the 1,500m -- that roughly translates to a 4:11-12 mile -- and is currently classified as a sophomore.
Some will argue that a 5K is very different from a 1,500 or two mile relay, but take into consideration that the course at Ragged Mountain is Panorama Farms, which is not a flat fast course.
This means that his performance could very well translate to the similarly-built Oatlands course.
He should have some solid competition that will make things interesting this weekend. Also entered is Maryland's Andrew Schell, Xavier Jemison of McLean, Nicholas Hayden of Millbrook, Nathaniel Woshner of James Wood, and Owen McArdle of Yorktown who won the Great Meadow Invitational.