Thanks for the shout-out, M2P. Feels good to see someone citing my times over a decade later. A little background on my situation: I never actually did cross country. I started high school as a 400m runner. I did my first high school 800m my sophomore year as a little rust-buster coming off of hamstring strain. After that I became more of an 800 runner but I stayed with the sprint squad under Karl Torchia as opposed to Tom Heath who coached the distance squad. Both are legendary coaches, and at the time I stuck with the coach I knew better.
Jakub Zivec ran for Grand Rapids High School in northern Minnesota and couldn't crack varsity! He went on to win 2008 Foot Locker Midwest Region and Nike XC Heartland Regional meets...earned first-team All-American honors with fifth-place finish at Foot Locker Nationals...was runner-up at the Nike XC Nationals in 2008 as well.
At Florida State he won regionals and ended up 21st at nationals to gain all american honors. BUT still never could crack that varsity squad for Grand Rapids high school and absolutely dominated JV races.
2008 Swain Invite
1 Jacob Zivec, 11 15:01.3 Grand Rapids 2 1 Guthrie Cunningham, 11 17:50.0 Duluth East 3 2 Joe Meister, 9 17:52.7 Wayzata 4 3 Maxwell Johnson, 11 18:01.4 Wayzata 5 4 Andrew Kleven, 11 18:10.9 Wayzata 6 5 Ricky Olson, 11 18:12.3 St Thomas Academy
Zivec was forced to run JV because he was from Czech Republic and he attended his Minnesota high school without being part of a recognized international exchange program.
He was by far faster than anyone on his team. If he was allowed to run varsity, Grand Rapids would have made the state meet. Instead, they missed the state meet by 9 points
14:53 has to be the fastest 5k time ever in any high school XC JV race
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