Cross Country starts this week
Although the pandemic eliminated all but one distance race from last year’s track season and set the Cross Country season back half a year, many Coronado distance runners have been training all along. Like many of the other coaches in the San Diego Section, I started an AAU club called “The Coronado Milers Club” that’s been meeting several times a week for focused training. Everyone who wanted to train with a group has had the opportunity to do so. Many of the club members also signed up for our group on Strava, so they (and I) can see what one-another are doing.
Returning from the 2019 Cross County team are our top boy and girl runners. For the girls, seniors Abigail Hundley and Sofia Van Arsdale have been training very well and have been ready to race for some time. Both were All-Western League in 2019, with Abigail advancing to the State Meet by finishing 13th at the CIF championships. Abby plans to join her sister, Madden Hundley, at Westmont College in Santa Barbara, where they’ll provide a decisive 1-2 punch for the Warriors. Sofia twisted her ankle in the qualifying CIF race for State, so she didn’t advance. However, she has signed with Liberty University, an NCAA Division I program in Lynchburg, Virginia, where she’ll major in Law and Policy.
The top returning boys are Landon Mullins, Aiden Beaumann, and Gio Navarro. Like Abby, Landon qualified for the state meet at the 2019 CIF finals with a ninth-place finish.
Other runners back from the 2019 season are Micha Arnott, Conor Youngblood, Anna Youngblood, and Lily Clemons. The girls’ team should get a boost from a trio of athletes moving up from the middle school program, Claire Cook, Julia Mineo, and Abby’s sister Lauren Hundley. There’s a group of around eight, mostly freshmen boys, who should move up as the season progresses. The official start of Cross Country is February 9th, and we’ll have our first meet on February 13th. The Cross Country Coaching staff consists of me, John Downey, and a new coach for both Cross Country and Track, Andrea Hughes. Andrea is also a new science teacher at CHS and ran mid-distance and distance events at Valhalla High School and USD.
Track and Field Needs Coaches
This season the Track and Cross Country seasons will overlap for about a month during March, with Track training and Cross Country meets happening simultaneously. This year’s track team will consist of all of the top Cross Country runners plus a still unknown number of kids in the other events. After a long series of seasons where we set new school records each year, we’re now in a rebuilding phase. The distance races will be fine because of our Club Teams and Cross Country, but most of the other events will consist of relatively new participants. It’s been two years since our last full track season, and most of the top performers have graduated. The other issue is that nearly all of the 2019 coaches have moved on. We’re looking for coaches to fill these slots, either as volunteers or in a paid position. If you’re familiar with any track and field event and have the time to help, please contact our Athletic Director, Robin Nixon, for more info. Her email is [email protected].
