The Saints’ head Cross Country and Track coach, Jerry Downey, founded the Saints Small School Invite in 1989 as an alternative to the larger North County meets. I don’t recall if we attended that first one, but we attended most others. Jerry passed in 2015, and a former student/athlete continued his legacy by renaming the event The Jerry Downey Classic.
The meet is held at Morley Field, with JV and varsity races for boys and girls. Only schools with enrollments of 1800 or less are allowed, and three CIF Divisions: 1, 2 and 3 compete in the same races. Divisional rankings are determined after the races. In D-4, the Coronado Boys placed second behind Crawford, and the girls placed third behind Mission Bay and High Tech High. All races were run over the same 5,000-meter course. Our top two girl runners were Gwynne Letcher, who ran 21:02.9, followed by Morgan Maske, who ran 21:03.0.
Our next three runners were Nadia Roos, Maesan Everett, and Ava Schlomer to complete the scoring.
The top boy finisher was Jack Letcher with 18:00 followed by Vincent Russo (18:22), Nathan Ayan (18:44), Xavier Marsh (19:45), and Andrew Buck (19:46) to complete the scoring. The pushers (6th and 7th runners) were Nicholas Wosje and Tyler Horton. Our top boys’ JV finisher was Anton Youngblood, with a PR time 20:53.
