Sorry for the delay in updating the site. Things have been hectic with the impending Hughson Supercross Invitational coming up. The Huskies had a good day in the league opener. Here is a race by race summary.
JV boys and JV girls combined race
the temperatures were already in the high 90s when this race started. With the exception of one runner, all Huskies in this race were brand new to cross country. As a staff, we had been warning the kids against the dangers of going out too hard. Some of the kids heeded this warning too much and let themselves get out of the race.
On the boys side, Brigham led the way for us, but his time was slower than the time trial. It was very hot, but by being too conservative, Brigham lost his chance at winning the race. Still in all, he finished 4th, a very respectable first outing. One runner who did benefit from the pacing was Jackson. Jackson dropped his time by over 30 seconds from the time trial to finish as our #2 man in 13:55. Good job buddy. For the boys, it was a mixed bag just like that. Some ran big improvements and some were slower than the previous week. It is good that we got our early race anxiety over with and can move on from here.
On the girls side, we were led by the strong 1-2 punch of Karissa and Maddy. Both are brand new to cross country and brand new to distance running, period. Karissa won the JV girls division and Maddy was second. Both girls bettered their time trial marks by over 1:20! This is fantastic work and bodes well for the performance of our varsity squad later in the season. The rest of our girls all made slight improments, but should be able to step it up a great deal.
Varsity Girls
This race was tough for us. We made the decision not to field a complete team due to injuries and illnesses. The three girls suited up were Becky, Kady, and Tasha. Part of the way into the warm up, Kady started throwing up, so our squad was down to 2. As the race went off, Becky went out smoothly, behind Ripon's top girl. When that girl slowed around the 0.5 mile point, Becky slowly began to pull away and was never pushed on the way to a 49 second win. Becky has not lost a TVL cross country or track competition of any kind in the last 2 years and looks to be well on her way to running that streak out to 3 years. The guts race of the day goes to Tasha. Tasha had her wisdom teeth removed only 4 days earlier and, wich cheeks swollen up like Alvin the Chipmunk, was still in a great deal of pain. None the less, she went out hard in 98 degree heat and put up a good fight. We can't wait to see you 100% healthy, Tash!
Varsity Boys Race
I, as head coach, had almost written off our chances of winning this meet. Ripon is the defending Sac Joaquin Section champion and returned 4 of their top 5 runners from last season. Our boys were 3rd at sections last year and I have believed all summer that we would be strong this season, but we came in to this meet really banged up. Of our top 8 guys, 3 did not even suit up. One of our other top guys, Adam, had hiked half dome with his dad less than 24 hours prior. It felt like we were going into this meet literally at half strength.
As the gun went off, Ryan Torres of Ripon bolted to the lead and opened up a huge gap by the mile mark. Coming into the wind on the way back to the 2 mile point, Torres began to struggle badly and our boy Ian was closing fast. At the 2 mile point, Ian was within a couple of seconds, which he closed on the courses only hill. Ian took the lead and opened a gap, before Torres rallied to catch him. The two battled back and forth for a few hundred meters, before Ian ran out of gas and fell back to a deciseve 2nd place. Behind Ian, however, things were going great for the Huskies. A hard charging Keaton moved into third, and finished only 6 seconds behind Ian. Zach was close to Keaton in 5th and Adam fough off tired and sore legs to squeak out a 9th place finish. The biggest surprise of the day for the entire team was the performance of Caleb. Caleb pulled off a massive PR under brutally hot conditions (98 and smoggy) to finish 13th. Caleb has gone from being one of the slowest runners I've ever coached to THE MAN who pulled out the win for us over the section champs. If that doesn't make you believe in the power of hard work, I don't know what will.
The Huskies are looking forward to their next meet, the Hughson Supercross Invitational. It should be a fun affair, with 16 teams and over 470 athletes registered.
What a race! Fantastic atmosphere even just reading about it. V boys, tremendous. Caleb...that will inspire others and should inspire you to up all your goals for XC & track season.
ReplyDeleteTasha...you might even beat me at table tennis, awesome.