Although the league competition for Cross Country is still over a month away, the cross country team has already competed in two Invitational Meets. On August 24th we took a partial squad to Lakeside to run in the Vaquero Stampede, a traditional season-opener for many San Diego teams for the last 35 years. Of its three divisions, we chose to compete in the fastest, for the competition. The first race was the D-1 Frosh/Soph girls. Last year’s middle school star Dana Jennings placed 7th with a time of 9:58 over the flat 1.65-mile course, out of 135 finishers. Our second finisher was Allison White, who ran 11:35, followed by Anna Youngblood in 11:51, then Ryan Brophy. The Frosh/Soph boys were up next over the same course with Landon Mullins placing 15th with a time of 8:51. Tim Shumaker placed 34th in 9:31, followed by Nolan Reuter (45th in 9:47), and Conor Youngblood (68th in 10:16). There were 201 finishers.
The third event was the girls’ Junior/Senior race in which Abigail Hundley place third with a time of 9:41, followed by Sofia Van Arsdale who placed fourth in 9:50, and Jessica Ehret who placed 18th with 10:28. When all three girls’ divisions were combined, we placed 8th out of the 42 schools with full teams at the meet.
Our final event was the boys’ Junior/Senior race over 2.15 miles. Aiden Baumann was our first runner to finish with a time of 12:21. Next was Cole Hutcherson in 12:28, then Micha Arnott in 12:59, and Will Leonard in 13:37.
We had our second meet of the season last Friday at the Wolf Pack Invitational, hosted by West Hills High School. Because of the Labor Day weekend, we didn’t have a full squad available, but several of our runners had good showings. These early meets are at a shorter distance than the 5000-meter races that we’ll be running later in the season. The boys’ course was 2.1 miles long over a dusty course with rolling hills. The divisions were by sex and grade-level only. Our best performance for the boys on hand was turned in by Casey Harris in the senior race. Casey navigated the course with a respectable time of 11 minutes and 11 seconds. When converted to a 5k time, his performance equates to around 16:56, pretty good for this time of the season.
Gio Navarro also broke 12 minutes in the boys’sophomore race with a time of 11:53, followed by Conor Youngblood with 13:16.
We had a tight pack in the boys’ junior race with Cole Hutcherson leading the way with a time of 12:10, followed by Aiden Baumann in 12:20, Micah Arnott in 12:28, and Will Leonard in 12:32.
Only one girl ran on Friday. Ryan Brophy ran 12:50 over the 1.5-mile girls’ course.
Finally, a few of our top girls ran in the 55th annual Balboa Four Mile run put on by the San Diego Track Club at Balboa Park as a workout. The course is extremely hilly and quite a challenge for anyone. Abigail Hundley, Dana Jennings, and Jessica Ehret placed 1-2-3 in the girls’ 13-18 division with times of 29:25, 30:09, and 30:56. Our next event will be the Bronco Roundup hosted by Rancho Bernardo High School at Kit Carson Park this Saturday.
