Sandburg Eagles Fly To Portland!
Having wrapped up a very magical 2014 Cross Country season at the Nike NXN national meet in Portland, I asked the seven Sandburg runners to answer a few questions regarding their experience.
Tommy Brennan's junior cross country season was a very successful one. He led the team to a second place finish at the State Meet, finishing in 31st place with a time of 14:54. At the Nike Regional, he placed 48th with a time of 15:50. At the Nike National meet, he finished in 144th with a time of 16:56.
Here's what Tommy had to say about the trip to Portland:
The whole NXN experience was great. The food was phenomenal, all of Nike's facilities were great and it was cool meeting hundreds of other kids from around the country.
My race went pretty bad.
It was cool to line up against the best teams in the country. Before the race, teams like Wayzatta were kind of unknown to us, and we really didn't know how good teams like Manlius were. Now we know where we stand and next year will be a lot easier because of it.
How did you like the course?
The course was a swamp. The footing was bad but I think that was part of what makes the course worthy of hosting the national championships.
We had dinner the night before the race with Ryan Hill, a pro who has run 3:54 in the mile. We all started grilling him and probably asked him a million questions. But the greatest two questions of course ended up coming from Brandon. At one point in all seriousness he asked Ryan Hill if he feels pain during races, and then proceeded to ask him what body part feels pain during a race and to rate it on a scale of one to ten.
Tell a story about the most interesting person you met at NXN.
I was partners in Foosball for like 10 games with a kid from Minnesota. I saw him again in the tent before the race and he was eating skittles. He seemed pretty nonchalant about the whole national championship race thing. But I ended up being surprised to find out after the race that he went All American and was the number one runner from the team that took second in the nation.