Scrimmage vs. Oakdale and Escalon

Hot temperatures strong winds, and a tough course awaited the Husky Harriers for today's opening scrimmage @ Woodward Reservoir.  Temperatures at start time were in the high 90s for the first race.  Although a wind came up later to cool things off, the result was that the last 1000m were run straight into a 10-15 mph breeze.  Even with the wind, the temps never dropped below 90.

The course was a combination of dirt roads and gravel roads over rolling hills alongside Woodward Reservoir.  There was zero shade.

Needless to say, times were slow.  Full results are posted on the results page.  I will give a quick summary of each race.

Boys and Girls JV Combined
Many of the athletes in this race were competing in cross country for the first time ever.  Our boys "dominated" this un-scored race (if the race would have been scored, we would have posted 20 points, for a comfortable win).  Freshman Oscar Madrigal took the lead early and never looked back, running a way to a 34 second victory.  Zach Morrett, in his first few weeks as a competitive runner, moved up steadily through the pack to finish second.  Although it was most of our boys' first race ever, they showed good patience and took control of the second half of the race.  2nd year runners Caleb Sawyer, Mason Deal, and Brandon Herroz helped the youngsters keep their pace under control early on.

Girls Varsity
Becky Hobby ran away from the field, starting from the first step and extending her lead all the way through the finish.  Her time of 19:50 under very difficult conditions bodes well for the future.  The time would have placed her 3rd in the Varsity Boys' race.  Kaitlynn Daugherty and Aubrey Fisher showed a little rust in this first effort.  They finished in 5th and 6th palce overall, but were over 4 minutes back from Becky.  Newcomer Savannah "the savage" Perez ran a nice steady effort and moved up well in the last mile to finish as our #4 runner, while another newcomer, Carli Young misjudged the length of the course and faded badly over the last mile.  I am very encouraged by the performance of Savannah, Carli, and Tasha Spears.  All 3 girls competed hard and although their results didn't see them near the front of the pack today, I am confident that there is a ton of improvement in store for all of them.

Boys Varsity
Lucas Fisher took the lead at around the 1/2 mile mark of the race today, but a side stitch foiled his dreams of early season glory.  Max Ortiz snatched the lead from Lucas, an Oakdale runner, and Escalon runner just before the mile mark and never gave it back.  Max struggled mightily during the last 1000m, giving up almost all of a sizeable lead that he had built by mid race, but held on to be the 3rd Husky of the day to finish first.  Lucas was hurting and appeared to "pack it in" mentally.  For the race today, we moved 3 frosh soph runners (Ian Brooks, Leo Vasquez, and Adam Lundell) into the varsity division.  The meet was unscored, but I still wanted to run a complete team.  I was very encouraged to see the three underclassmen running together for almost the entire race, moving up from mid pack early to the top 7 overall places by the end.  Keaton Crowder and Jacob Aldava, 2 of our normal top 4 runners, sat out today.  Keaton has been slowed by growing pains in his knees and Jacob was battling some sort of bug today.  The addition of those two boys back into the line up will make the VB squad a force to be reckoned with in Stanislaus County.