TVL Finals - A great day for the Huskies

TVL Finals was by far the best single meet run by a Hughson cross country team in the past 17 years.  The JV boys and Varsity Girls went in as favorites to win league titles, which they did convincingly.  However, it was the performance of the JV girls and Varsity boys, who went in as heavy underdogs, that made the meet so special.

JV Girls Race
At the first 2 TVL meets, Ripon had won this division fairly handily and we had been second both times.  For TVL finals, we moved a number of girls up to Varsity, so it seemed that the chances of us winning a title would be slim to none.  This was not the case.  Diana Brown ran her best race as a Husky to take home the individual title.  The rest of the girls in the race for us ran strongly and courageously to tie Escalon 54-54 for the meet win with Ripon placing 3rd with 57 points.  With a 54-54 tie, the rarely scored 6th runner became the tie breaker.  Fortunately for the Huskies, Monica Yup ran her best race of the season and broke the tie in our favor.  If Ripon were to have placed 2nd, we would have to share the championship with them, but because Escalon squeaked past them by 3 points, we were able to claim the undisputed title!

Top 3 Teams
Hughson 54
Escalon 54
Ripon 57

JV Boys Race
Just as he has done all year, Austin Hoach won the JV boys division at a TVL meet.  Just as our JV boys have done all year, they finished first, despite the fact that we had moved a fast improving Christian Lee up to the varsity ranks.  Our boys scored, a lowest of the season 25 points to easily outdistance second place Ripon.  Derek Avila (3rd), Noah Martin (4th), Matthew Walton (6th) and Julian Cedano (11th) rounded out the Husky Scorers.

Top 3 Teams
Hughson 25
Escalon 49
Riverbank 67

Varsity Girls Race
According to Scott Durham of the Stanislaus County Distance website, we were favorites to win the meet by 5-7 points.  As it turned out, the meet was nowhere near that close as our girls easily outdistanced the multi-year defending champion Bruins of Riverbank.  Our strategy in this meet was to be less cautious than usual, run a little closer to the front early on and then chase down the leaders as hard as possible.  The strategy worked wonderfully, as all of our top 6 runners were able to place in front of Riverbank's #3 runner, Lydia Hodges (who only 2 of our girls had previously beaten) and our top 2 runners were able to overcome Bruin runner Stephanie Bernal, who none of us had ever beaten.

This team is clearly the best girls team that Hughson has fielded in the past 17 years, as we were able to place 6 girls into our all time top 12 for the Legion Park course.  This is a list that has been kept for the past 16 years and is topped by all state runner Becky Hobby.  This year's team put girls at #3 (Emily Fife), #4 (Abby Mitchell), #5 (Kinsey Langely), #8 (Esmeralda Campos), #11 (Heavyn Herroz) and #12 (Taylor Gray)

Top 3 Teams
Hughson 38
Riverbank 56
Ripon 77

Varsity Boys Race
Going into the meet, our boys had already suffered defeats of 30+ and 20+ points at the hands of an all senior Riverbank Bruin squad.  Despite the fact that we have been improving rapidly, the Stanislaus County Distance website still had us as underdogs by more than 10 points.  Our boys didn't buy into any of that ranking stuff and we designed a strategy to attack the Bruins mid race and make them hurt.  We hoped to be able to demoralize the opponent mid race, causing them to fall apart mentally.  Our boys executed their strategy perfectly and put the Bruins into serious distress, but the boys from Riverbank didn't give up and fought back to hold take a very narrow 34-36 victory and lengthen their streak of TVL titles top 4 years.

Up front, the race was actually dominated by the Huskies.  The hard mid race surge where Daniel Yanez, Carson Boice, and Jaymie Jackson broke away from the field ended up netting us a 1-2 finish as Yanez and Boice were the first runners across the line.  A strong late race rally by Riverbank's Ruben Paredez and Eric Wise pushed Jackson back to 5th and kept the Bruins close enough so that their 3,4,5 runners could seal the deal for them. The race was completely dominated by runners from Hughson and Riverbank, as the two teams placed 10 runners in the top 15 overall and even the combined score of the 2 teams would still have been good enough to hold off 3rd place Escalon.  Josue Esquivel and Garrett Hartman both joined the Husky top 3 in the top 15 overall, bringing home TVL medals for their collection.

Our boys will face Riverbank at least 2 more times this season at Subs and Sections (and maybe again at State).  We have gotten closer each time we've raced and will be looking to surpass the Bruins in our next meetings.

Top 3 Teams
Riverbank 34
Hughson 36
Escalon 82

Updated All Time HHS Top 10