Everyone looks forward to opening weekend with an extra measure of anticipation.
Even for the teams that are not participating--and there are plenty of those--opening weekend carries a lot of interest. Suddenly, all the speculative discussion of the summer loses its currencty as teams begin to lay down real performances on the course.
There will be one real performance in southern Utah and one in northern Utah this weekend.
For southern Utah, things get started with the Hurricane Invitational. With highs in the low 100s and lows in the low 70s slated for the weekend, it figures to be a test of the athletes' heat acclimation. But, if you live in or around St. George, heat is something you simply learn to deal with.
The aptly-named Premier Invitational is held in Settlement Canyon, just outside of Tooele. Twenty-some schools will be involved in the running of this meet.
Jake Heslington of Timpanogos posted the fastest tour of this course in last summer's meet with a 15:42. Natalie Shields destroyed the girls' field with an 18:01 clocking, winning by a full minute over Sydney Terry of Timpanogos. Shields won't be back to defend her title--they have her busy at BYU these days--but Heslington could be. In any case, we're in a great position to see who is coming into cross country season is great shape among the northern Utah schools at this meet.
With forecasted highs for Tooele in the low 90s and lows in the mid 60s for the weekend, this one should provide somewhat less Spartan conditions for the competitors than those to be faced in Hurricane.
MileSplit Utah has put in requests for results to both meets. Those results will be posted as soon as possible after receipt. If any of you would like to post photos from either meets, I'll make that process as simple as possible with the directions below:
1. You must be a registered user of MileSplit Utah. You can do this by clicking on the blue Register link in the upper right corner of any page and filling out the information. This gives you a user account.
2. You must be logged in to a user account to post photos.
3. Find the meet page for your meet. For simplicity's sake, I've linked the meet pages for both of this weekend's meets below (you can also link to a meet by going to the Calendar and clicking on the meet, or, if results have been posted, by clicking on the link to the meet that appears on the front page:
4. On the meet page, find the link to Add Your Photos. Note, this link will not appear until the day of the meet. This will take you to a photo uploading utility where you locate your photos on your computer or external device and upload them to the meet page. It is highly recommended that your pictures be resized before uploading. 600 pixels wide is the standard for uploading photos. Photoshop, as well as other photo editing programs, generally have a utility for bulk resizing of photos. Please note that any inappropriate photos will be taken down as soon as I become aware of them.
It is entirely possible that I may request a full-size file of some photos posted for editorial use on the front page. This would apply not only to this weekend, but for meets throughout the entire season. MileSplit Utah is what we make of it together.