Gulliver History has been made: Phil Woerner!!!!
I just need to describe this event. it was such an utterly spectacular event to watch i was floored when it happened. Ok so the cross country state meet was today, in Dade City. Our team had no chance of winning because of an unfortunate event that happened the night before which i dont feel like talking about, but it resulted in our second best runner being sent home before the race. Phil still had a chance to win the individual title. It was pretty much a four man race, between Tampa Jesuit's Ben Martucci, Belen's Guillermo Echarte, Phil, and Godby's Joe Franklin (he's black..) anywho for the first mile and a half the front four broke away from everyone pretty early and phil took second position in the group behind guillermo who led it the whole race. about a mile and a half in guillermo started making a move and phil followed so they left franklin and martucci behind. then at the 2 mile mark guillermo according to phil "just fucking booked it and took off, and i knew that if i went at his pace i would have died" this was part of guillermo's strategy that he was hoping would assure him a state championship title. where with a mile to go he would move into full stride mode, which when your at their level of fitness is fucking fast, and just remain there for the next mile and hopefully phil would follow his move and guillermo could wear phil out. phil was smarter than that and let guillermo lead for the next mile by about a distance of 60 meters (10 seconds) which is a pretty large distance. so since it was on a horse track the finish is 3/4 the way down a stretch and the final 500 meters is up an incline. well as phil and guillermo turned the corner phil was still 10 seconds behind guillermo and then i did another count and about 200 meters in phil cut the lead to about 7 seconds. guillermo was slowing down crazy up the hill because that last mile took everything out of him. finally with about 100 meters to go guillermo lurches and then unexpectedly just collapses. it was so crazy to see this happen to the number 1 runner, he just collapsed in mid stride, like his legs just flailed under him and phil sprinted up and past to him, and as he was passing him guillermo got up as fast as he could and tried to keep up with phil as to not let him win but phil was just too strong and guillermo collapsed again. i have to give him a lot of respect he kept going even when he was on the brink of exhaustion. every time he collapsed on himself he got back up in a fluid motion like just rolled on over and stood up. it took him a minute to get that last 100 meters in and finished about 15th instead of 2nd. he collapsed about 5 more times after that initial one and it was so saddening to see him just flail about not really knowing where he is going and then collapsing for a final time i thought he was done for the day a foot before the finish line but he got enough energy to pull his feet across the line so he could be scored then his team mates pulled him across. Phil was the rightful victor in this race though he had the most smarts and most strength. people are going to try to take this away from phil by saying 'oh he collapsed from the heat/exhaustion' well first of all the heat was a nonfactor in his collapsing he just pushed it too hard becuase he was afraid of phil so of course he exhausted himself. its just amazing to think how that must feel you are in such peak physical position and you reach your limit like just hit that wall and cant move on. i know the feeling he went through when you dont know where your going your just trying to get there but in the state meet when you are in the lead.. now that sucks. phil was interviewed by the herald after the race on camera so he will probably have a feature tomorrow morning and will probably be on varsity sports sunday or one of those hs sports shows in the morning.. im so fucking proud of him i believed in him the whole fucking way he just needed the right motivation. He has done something that no one else ever in Gulliver has done, which is come back with an individual state title in cross country. Not his brother not even Sharkey or Jordan Adler ever got an individual title.