Brookhaven Boys Stay On Top
Brookhaven's Varsity Boys Squad
Much like MAIS 5A, it was MHSSA 6A that dominated the team competition, with 7 teams out of the Elite 8 is from that class. The winner, however, was outside of MHSAA 6A... keeping their undefeated streak in Mississippi competition, and is a team that we all know well, and that is Brookhaven High School.
Brookhaven took down strong 6A programs such as Oxford, Tupelo, and Oak Grove, teams that just placed inside of the top 3 at the MHSAA 6A meet, with Oxford being the champions in that class. It was somewhat of a tight race between Brookhaven and Oxford, as Brookhaven's margin of victory was less than 20 points, 15 points to be exact, which is the closest any Mississippi team has gotten to them all year, in this big of a meet. (Saltillo was 14 points away at the 5A State Championships, in essentially a dual meet - still a great performance from Saltillo on that day, just saying that this meet was bigger). Oxford's 4 and 5 runners have really filled in the gaps lately, and have been a big attribution to their success as of late. As a matter of fact, Bailey Kosko, Oxford's usual #4, has been their #3 twice in a row now.
Oxford's Bailey Kosko
Another team that has really impressed me lately has been Oak Grove High School, who placed 3rd on Saturday. They have a strong low stick in 16:09 5k runner Bennett Ferguson who has been really turning it on in the final part of his season, and having 3 more guys under 17 helps out a great deal as well. As a matter of fact, their whole team has run significantly faster since Watson, and with their top 3 returning, this team could be dangerous next year if they find just a couple of more runners that can get below 17:20 or faster, along with programs such as Pearl, Tupelo, and Saltillo. We could definitely see more teams having their 1-5 break 17.
The momentum started from this year's Brookhaven squad though, as they will have one last outing at the 2021 RunningLane Championships, where they will most likely be placed in the Silver Division against some stellar competition - The Gold Division is basically NXN. Their 1-5 5k team average of 16:14 is astonishing, and is the fastest 5k team average in Mississippi history by a fair margin. They will surely try to lower that even more at RunningLane. However, they have brought the rest of the state with them, as there are 6 other teams that have their 1-5 average faster than 17 minutes - This is the most amount of teams to have done this in the same year in Mississippi history. As a matter of fact, Oxford's 16:27 1-5 average is the 2nd fastest average of all time. We also can't forget their performance from Watson, as they were the first team to have all 5 break 17 in the same race - Pearl did it as well. We also can't forget about Ocean Springs's historic performance at the 2021 MHSAA 6A State Meet. All in all, I can't wait to see how this translates when teams chase Brookhaven's records next year, and a handful of them have a realistic shot.