Thais Rolly of McLean broke the Pole Green Park 5K course record at last year's MileStat.com XC Invitational with her 17:27 victory. This year, she will be attempting to repeat as champion in Virginia's largest high school cross country invitational with the race being her very first one of her 2022 cross country season.
The Eastbay National finalist one year ago with a 34th place finish and a 3-time VHSL 6A state champion in cross country (2021 spring) and track (2022 indoor 3200m & 2022 outdoor 1600m), Rolly had college visits and Hurricane Ian wipe out racing opportunities in prior weekends to be lace up the racing spikes for the first time this fall to race on the grass not till the very late date of October 15th.
Part of the lack of racing up until this point was strategic to save more in the tank for the post-season as Rolly hopes to once again herself a trip out to San Diego to race the nation's best 40 high school cross country runners at the Champs Cross Country Championships (formerly Eastbay/Foot Locker/Kinney Championships) and advance out of the South Regional qualifier in Charlotte over Thanksgiving.
Rolly also got the important and sometimes stressful college decision out of the way as she has already verbally committed to run for Duke University next year. She will bring to the Blue Devils also some stellar track times including bests of 2:53 in the 1000, 4:49 for 1600 meters, and 10:16 for two miles. Rolly earned All-American honors twice last year at New Balance Nationals Indoor (7th, 10:17) and New Balance Nationals Outdoor (5th, 10:16).
She had interesting summer of training that took her to the East African country of Uganda for several weeks with her family and even getting a chance to go on a training run altitude with top level runners from the nation while on vacation.
She will have another large pack of elite runners to run with on Saturday at Pole Green Park in Mechanicsville when she toes the starting line in the elite race.
There will be two other national finalists from last year's Eastbay Nationals as part of the South Region team that will be competing on Saturday as well at the MileStat.com XC Invitational including Allie Zealand of the Pacers Homeschool squad and Maddie Gardiner of The Covenant School.
Zealand will not get a chance to race head to head with Rolly and the other top high schoolers in the meet as sanctioning rules prevent her from racing in the elite race, but she will be racing in the community open race to start the day which will include unattached runners of all ages. Zealand with a 17:21 5K best from last fall and 36th place finish at Eastbay Cross Country Nationals, had an incredible track season clocking times of 4:43 for 1600 meters and 10:15 for 3200 meters. Do not be surprised if Zealand takes down the 17:27 course and meet record by Rolly in the open race that starts at 7:50 AM, which will give Rolly and the rest of the top entrants in the elite girls race at 8:55 AM a chance to then rebuttal.
Gardiner was the runner-up in last year's MileStat.com Invite to Rolly with a time of 17:37 and ultimately ran a personal best of 17:13 to finish third at the Eastbay South Regional to qualify for nationals and finish 38th in San Diego just behind Rolly. Gardiner could easily win the MileStat.com XC Invitational this week and she could also easily not even be the first finisher from her team as The Convenant School has an amazingly talented duo with her and Reese Dalton.
Dalton with track PR's of 4:47 in the 1600 and 10:36 in the 3200 is coming off a big win last weekend at the Albemarle Invitational just ahead of Gardiner and Western Albemarle's Sadie Adams in an thrilling finish and earlier won at Pole Green Park on the harder woods loop course with a 17:59 performance.
Teammate Gardiner had wins in between those two meets at Fork Union and Woodberry Forest. Both should run well into the 17 minute range on the hill-less upper course at Pole Green Park used for the MileStat.com XC Invitational.
Western Albemarle sophomore Sadie Adams had split the two from Covenant up at the Albemarle Invitational and has been a close runner-up in two of the state's more competitive invitationals prior to this weekend between last weekend as well as the Oatlands Invitational to Herndon's Gillian Bushee. Keeping up with her consistency taking second place finishes, Adams as a ninth grader finished second at the NXN Southeast Regional (18:06) and her lone sub 18 minute race came in a sixth place finish of 17:50 at last year's MileStat.com Invitational.
Last year's NXN Southeast Regional individual champion in sophomore Hannah Rae Shaffer is making the trip up from North Carolina with her Cardinal Gibbons teammates. Shaffer has a personal best of 17:19 from last year's RunningLane National Championships to rank 3rd fastest among all entrants' personal bests.
Sailor Eastman of Battlefield owns the fastest PR in the field at 17:06 and won last year's VHSL 6A state title over Rolly. The two battled it out and traded state titles in cross country twice in the same year with covid pushing the 2020 fall cross country championships to actually be held in the spring of 2021. Rolly won over Eastman in the spring of 2021, while Eastman evened the score as the state champion in the fall of 2021. Eastman has yet to be running at that champion form level yet though this season, so tough to put the expectation on her to compete for the win here.
While this meet will feature 3 returning Eastbay National finalists, do not be surprised to see some new faces in the field to qualify for national competition this fall. Two runners in particular to look at who could possibly achieve that feat this fall include Hanover's Allie Crytser and Good Counsel's Leah Stephens.
Crytser was only 3 places from qualifying for Eastbay Nationals last year when she ran her 17:39 personal best for 13th place at the South Regional in Charlotte. She is coming off a season best sub 18 win last weekend at the Richard Bland Invitational. She will certainly have a local crowd rooting for her against all of the great out-of-area talent assembling at the MileStat.com XC Invitational.
Meanwhile, Stephens is the best cross country runner right now in the state of Maryland and had a huge win last at the adidas XC Challenge last month in Carolina, North Carolina when she clocked a 17:21 PR to win by 20 seconds. That performance is the fastest this season by athlete racing this weekend at the MileStat.com Invitational.
The Maryland Private Schools state champion Stephens finished 7th in last year's MileStat.com Invitational with a time of 18:06 is much improved since then after a track season running a personal best of 10:25 for 3200 meters. She finished 34th in last year's Eastbay Northeast Regional and definitely could see her qualifying of this year's regional race in November with her performances this season.
With the long list of race sharpened national elite stars for this year's MileStat.com XC Invitational, it would actually be pretty remarkable for Thais Rolly in her first race of the season to defeat them all again. It certainly looks like another meet record performance will be required by whoever will be our 2022 MileStat.com XC Invitational girls individual champion.