By Geoff Kimmerly
Second Half editor

Over the past nine days, Nick Raymond has replayed his best high school cross country race over and over in his memory.

He starts from the beginning and goes right through the finish line – while enjoying especially his surge during the second of the 3.1-mile Lower Peninsula Division 3 Final on Nov. 3 at Michigan International Speedway.

“If I hadn't done that, it could’ve been a difference race,” Raymond admitted Monday.

Instead, it was one of the best Division 3 races run in MHSAA history.

The Erie Mason senior received a Second Half High 5 after claiming his school’s first overall individual championship in 15:05.1, the second-fastest Division 3/Class C Finals time behind only that of Ovid-Elsie’s Maverick Darling in 2007. Raymond's also was the second-fastest time run at the Finals this fall.

And it was a redeeming way to finish his high school cross country career. Raymond found himself at the front of the Division 3 pack as a junior in 2011, but finished fourth. But he started this race with a speedy 4:39 mile and then kicked into another gear halfway home, which was his strategy all along.

“I've just been doing that all year, and it seemed to be working time-wise,” Raymond said. “If I do it then, and I can pull away, it gets into (my opponents') minds that they could get beat.”

Erie Mason has a solid running tradition. It finished 16^th as a team this fall and won Division 3 in 2006. Matthew Waldfogel took first among individual finishers in the 1994 Class C Final, when team and individual qualifiers ran separate races, although his time would've tied for only second if both had been run together.

Raymond’s final season puts him at the top of individuals who have come through the program.

He finished his freshman year as the team’s number two runner, and “just progressively got faster,” Erie Mason coach Alison Meisner said. By the end of last fall, Raymond had the school record with a best of 15:59, his time at MIS.

But the best was yet to come. 

"He had lots of natural talent, but he has a really good worth ethic," Meisner said. "He's very goal-oriented. He's just a little more driven to work at goals he sets for himself." 

When he opened this season at the Ottawa Lake Whiteford Invitational by running 15:59 again, Meisner knew her standout might show more than just the usual improvement that comes from going from junior to senior.

Raymond’s moment of realization came two weeks later when he ran a 15:26 at the New Boston Huron Invitational.

“I realized I could go much faster,” he said. “I was pretty tired, because it was the first time I ever went that fast. But whenever I get a p.r. (personal record), I feel like I could go faster.”

Raymond ran 15:16 a week later at the Oregon Cardinal Stritch Invitational near Toledo, and then 15:15 or better three times before cutting 10 more seconds at MIS.

Oddly enough, the subject of Darling – now a standout at the University of Wisconsin – came up after Raymond beat the field by more than a minute with a 15:15 at his Regional.

An opposing runner quipped that Raymond might have dominated, but he wasn't Darling just yet.

But he’s getting closer. And Raymond too hopes to continue running at the highest level next fall.

“They were dogging me that I wasn't as good as Maverick Darling was,” Raymond said. “But my friends said it was sweet that I was even mentioned in the same sentence as him.”

PHOTO: Erie Mason senior Nick Raymond charges down the home stretch on the way to winning the MHSAA Lower Peninsula Division 3 championship at Michigan International Speedway. (Click to see more from HighSchoolSportsScene.com.)