The best way to put together a competitive Cross Country Team is to have a lot of runners. As a general rule, around 10% of these will be competitive, and 1% will be superstars. Because of COVID, our team is small this season. We have only nine active girls and ten active boys. We’re in the Western League with some of the largest schools with rosters many times ours. For example, Scripps Ranch has around 60 kids, Point Loma has approximately 70, and Cathedral Catholic has about 80. So, why are we in the Western League instead of the City League with schools and teams closer to our size? It’s because in normal years we’re competitive at the Western League level. When we were in the City League, we were the perennial League and CIF D-IV champions. When we moved up to the Eastern League a few years ago, we won the championships there. So now, with our small roster, we’re in a bit over our heads. But, we’ll be back. It’s better to be in a strong league than one in which you dominate every season.
At our first league meet on October 6th, our top finisher for the boys was senior Conor Youngblood, who finished in 17th out of the 104 runners over the City Conference 3.11 mile course with a time of 17:19. This time was a big Personal Record for Conor as his previous best was 18 minutes flat. Also running well was sophomore Detrik Heidt with a time of 18:30. This was also a big PR as his previous best was 19:59.
In the boys’ JV race, our top finisher was Borja Ferrer, who clocked 21:30 followed by Baxter Simpson (21:44), Jack Shumaker (21:45), and Rafael Roos (22:53). Our top girl finisher was Lily Clemons, who ran 22:33 over the same course. She was followed by Dana Jennings, Jaya Jost, Anna Youngblood, Eva Vinegrad, and Sierra Grella.
The following week, on October 13th, we entered only a few runners because of the PSAT testing and a longer school day. Also, this cluster was a non-scoring meet, and not all of the top runners from all the schools participated. In that meet our top boy runner was Detrik, who placed sixth with a time of 19:01. Lily was our top girl runner placing fifth over a shorter course of 2.5 miles with a time of 17:35.
You can see photos of this race as well as all others from this season and previous season at https://www.greensthings.com/XC.
