It's funny how you can travel to a race two states away and still see friends and familiar faces everywhere you look. But when it comes to those familiar faces racing against the rest of the southeast region, everyone cheers for the familiar faces just like any other teammate. This was demonstrated by the roar of the crowd that Jessie Rubin heard as she was announced as an individual qualifier for the Nike Cross Country Nationals Championship in Portland, Oregon on December 5. Despite Rubin only having one Wootton High School teammate present, coaches, athletes, and parents from other Montgomery County schools who have watched her develop over the last several years applauded her loudly as she stepped onto stage with the other nationally elite runners.

Rubin was pessimistic about qualifying because she had not approached the times in the low 18's that it took to qualify last year. But Brandon Miles of Milestat.com ranked her 9th in the region after analyzing the entries, later saying that he was impressed by her margin of victory in the last several races. He added that only her sixth place finish at Oatlands prevented him from ranking her ahead of the likes of Kaitlyn Davis and Ariel Karabinus.

The course was firm with good footing, few hills, and no sharp turns. Temperatures were cool without a cloud in the sky. With a good race, the fast time would come naturally.

She ran smart, hanging with the leaders to run a first mile in 5:30. She faded on the second mile with a time over 6 minutes and found herself in between two packs. Over the final mile, she worked to move back up with the lead pack, although the Stevens twins from Blacksburg were long gone by that point.

Coming up the final hill (which is not as steep as it is long and draining), she was in 8th place with about 600 meters to go. An 8th place finish would give her a good chance at qualifying for nationals considering the girls who took the top 4 spots were all on strong teams with a chance at qualifying. This included the twins from Blacksburg who were almost certain to qualify with their team. A 7th place finish would almost guarantee her a spot to nationals. These are the things that fans were shouting to her in the final stretch.

Ironically, she saw a Team VA singlet from the Battle of the Potomac race directly in front of her. She thought about the Team MD singlet that she was wearing and decided she wanted to try to beat the VA girl. She didn't know that it was Kaitlyn Davis of Mountain View High School, who recently won the Battle of the Potomac, the Virginia AAA state title and also defeated her convincingly at the Oatlands Invitational earlier in the season. So with Karabinus (who won the Oatlands Invitational) directly behind her, Rubin moved into 7th place ahead of Davis in a personal best time of 18:05.

The Walter Johnson girls competed as a team and finished tenth overall. Anna Bosse led the team with a 25th place finish in 18:40.2.

While Rubin worked with her friends to figure out if she qualified for nationals and exchanged a few words with her future coach at Duke University, Andrew Palmer and the MoCo boys from Walter Johnson and Churchill High Schools took to the course.

Palmer moved to the front from nearly the beginning. The pace was notably slower than last year, so Palmer put in a surge mid race to create some separation. That must have played perfectly into the hands of Jamestown's Colin Mearns as Mearns stuck with Palmer and made a huge move later in the race for which no one had an answer. Palmer and Tyler Anyan of "Snellville XC Club" worked to try to catch Mearns to no avail. On the final uphill stretch with 400 meters to go, Palmer worked his way past Anyan, but was quickly re-passed. Mearns won in 15:16.5, Anyan was second in 15:20.6, and Palmer was third in 15:21.5.

Palmer noted that he was a little disappointed that he couldn't come away with the win, but said that his goal was first and foremost to qualify for nationals. He planned his whole season around peaking for nationals.