Coronado’s cross country adventure last week was at the Cumming/Latham Invite at Rohr Park hosted by Otay Ranch High School. For decades, two early season invites were offered by two legendary coaches over the same course, Tim Latham from Sweetwater High School and Ian Cumming from Otay Ranch High School. Latham’s version of the meet was called the South Bay Invite; Cumming’s version was called the Mustang Invite. I’m familiar with both because I timed and produced results for both (mostly South Bay) before all events started using chips.
Races were divided into two divisions, with the larger/faster schools in the Mustang Division, and the smaller schools in the Red Devil division. Based on our historical performances in this event, we were placed in the Mustang Division. However, we’re not yet back to our historical strength, so we were in a bit deep.
Our girls’ varsity team consists of four freshmen (one missing because she had her wisdom teeth pulled) and another recovering from an e-bike incident (an increasing problem in Coronado), a sophomore, a junior, and a senior who missed the meet because she had the flu.
I think that the size and quality of the 2.5-mile fast girls’ varsity race took the younger girls by surprise, and they didn’t get off the line fast enough. Getting stuck in the pack is a problem with nearly a hundred runners. Still, the girls finished in eighth place as a team among the larger schools. When the results were combined with the Red Devil varsity race, they were still in eighth in a virtual tie with two other Division-4 schools, Imperial and Valley Center. Sophomore Morgan Maske, having a bit more experience, did go out with the pack to finish with a time of 17.42 over the 2.5-mile varsity girls race.
This time ranked her third among the D-4 girls at the meet. Our other scorers (top 5 finishers) in the D-4 contest were Carly DeVore (6th with 18:33), Maesan Everitt (10th with 19:24), Natalia Amkie (11th with 19:35), and Nadia Roos (13th with 19:39) for a total of 43 points. Our pusher was Stefanie Romero in 24th place. Imperial also had 43 points (5,7,8,9,14), and Valley Center 48 points (1,2,4,19,22).
L-R: Freshmen Carly DeVore, Nadia Roos, Maesan Everitt, senior Natalia Amkie, Sophomore Morgan Maske. Freshman Gwynne Letcher and Junior Jaya Jost are missing because of wisdom teeth and flu.
Photo by Amy Youngblood
Our top finisher among the varsity boys’ 5000 meter heats was Rafael Roos with 18:22, Nathan Ayan in close pursuit with 18:49, and Xavier Marsh and Jack Shumaker.
Before starting the league cluster meets, our final invitational will be the Mt. Carmel Invite on September 16th at Morley Field. Mt. Carmel uses the 3-mile CIF championship course. With over 100 schools attending, it’s the largest meet in San Diego and will give us more insight into where we stand in our division. Results and photos of this and other meets are on our website at IslanderTrack.com.
