Volunteer Opportunities

I'm going to try and post a sign up list online here.  Let's see if this works.

10/15/16 Hughson Supercross Invitational
Supercross Jobs

• Open the link above.
• See which jobs you might be interested in.
• Type your name in next to the job you would like to do.

So far, I have two parents: Stacey Bargas and Julie Castro.  It takes a village to raise this meet.

10/21/16 Snackbar at Homecoming Game
We have two shifts available. I need 13 people per shift, so feel free to sign up for both :).  Unfortunately, we cannot have kids working in the snack bar.

• Early shift 4:45-7:30
• Late shift 7:30 - Close.

Here is a link to another sign up sheet.  This technology stuff will be pretty cool if it works.

Snack Bar Sign Up

Race Recaps

Lowell Invitational, 9/10/16:
The trip to San Francisco and cooler, cleaner air is always a highlight of our season.  This year was no different.

Smiling for the camera at Ocean Beach

The varsity girls took a big step toward's establishing themselves as one of the top small school programs in Northern California.  Our team is still a work in progress and we are no where near as good as we need to be or can by by the end of the season.  In San Francisco, running without 2 of our potential top 7 girls, we were still able to place tied for 3rd in a very strong field of mostly large school teams from the Central Coast Section and North Coast Section.  Abbi Mitchell led the way for us, as she has done so far this season, however, this time, the rest of our pack finished within 53 seconds of Abbi's lead.  A team grouping of less than 60 seconds is critical as the bigger, more important meets come around at the end of the season.  This was a huge step in the right direction for us.

Carson, Josue, and Jaymie approach the 2 mile point togehter

The varsity boys squad was also running without 2 of it's top guys.  Nonetheless, we were able to place 16th in a field of pretty strong teams. Carson Boice led the way for us a second time this year, with his strong finish.  Carson was joined under 17 minutes by Josue Esquivel and Jaymie Jackson.  A very nice development for us was Sean Harcrow, running in the JV race.  It was Sean's first ever cross country meet, and I didn't want to throw him to the wolves right away.  He placed a strong 10th in the JV field and was actually our 4th fastest boy on the day.  Inserting Sean and Christian into the varsity mix would have probably moved us up into the top 8-9 schools in our race.

The FS groups were a bit intimidated and should learn a lot from the experience of racing against fast
kids from all over the northern half of our state.  Of that group, only Jasmine Barrita really ran unafraid.  Learning to be fearless and race hard may take a while for the younger group, but it is something they will all get.




Josh Ruff Memorial Invitational 9/17/16:
If the meet in San Francisco was all about the varsity athletes, then this meet in Folsom was our younger group's chance to shine.  The course at Willow Hills Reservoir serves as the championship site for the Sac Joaquin Section.  As such, it is important for all of our kids to get experience on the hot, dusty, rocky, hilly circuit.  Mission accomplished.

Some of the varsity kids got the day off and did a training run on the route before the meet started.  Our younger kids got to race on the course for the first time.

Austin running in the top 10 overall!

FSG Pack about 1 mile into the race.

Probalby the biggest improvement of the week came from our Frosh/Soph boys group.  This is mostly the same group that placed dead last in their heat in San Francisco.  This week, led by Austin Hoach's 10th place finish, our boys improved to 9th out of 13 teams.  More importantly, they got out and pushed hard.  For many of them, it was the first time in a race that they had felt the actual pain of racing.  Contrats to the FSB squad for their much improved effort.


We also got another solid effort from the frosh soph girls' squad.   This race might not have been quite as good for us as the Lowell Invitational, but we did start to develop the pack mentality that is shared by almost all good teams.  Our pack kind of fell apart toward the last 800 of the race and we will work on pushing eachother and pushing ourselves not to give up when the race gets tough, but overall, this was a B or B+ effort from the young ladies of Hughson Cross Country.





Lowell Invite Photo Album

Lowell Invitational in Golden Gate Park

Hello Team:

Today is the day we open the TVL season and my focus is there 100%.  However, I have been getting
some questions about this Saturday's meet in San Francisco.

Here is a Link to the official meet information which includes schedules and course maps.

Parking is usually very difficult at this meet.  Most people try and park off of  John F. Kennedy Drive.  I would instead follow this Map, but turn left on Transverse Drive and then a quick right on Overlook Drive,  Go to the end of Overlook drive and park on the side of the road.  You will have to walk down a little path to get to our team area, but parking is usually available on the south side of the meadow there.  Our team area will be across the meadow from the restrooms at Hellman Hollow.

They're Off!

This meet is usually one of the most fun events we attend all year....AND our kids will see some great competition. This year's competition should be even tougher, since another big meet scheduled for the Monterrey area was recently cancelled.  I would expect that a large number of teams will be looking for a place to compete that weekend.

Tough competition = FAST racing....should be fun!

Hope to see many of you there this saturday and hope to see all of you there today!


Coach B

Reno Twilight Invitational

9/2/2016 - The Huskies made their first ever trip across state lines for a cross country meet....and came home winners.

What is a trip to Reno without a pic under
the sign.

This year was the first year that a Hughson team has ever made the trip for what is a very cool, fairly low key, but entertaining meet: the "Nature's Bakery Reno Twilight Invitational". I've wanted to take a team over the mountains for this meet ever since it was first introduced 10 years ago, I just finally decided to make it happen this year.  I believe that the team is glad that we went.  A few vehicle troubles aside, the trip went off smoothly and the experienced, returning runners had a chance to do something they've never done before....run a cross country race at night.

The idea behind the meet, was to reward the veteran runners who put in the work over the summer.  What we ended up getting was a wonderful team building weekend, an individual win, and a couple of cool trophies.  Also, the kids got to see us two coaches lace 'em up and do our best to trot around the cc course without puking and dying.

Open Race
For the mere price of 25 dollars each, Coach B and Coach S had the privilage of developing burning lungs and nausea over a period of 18-20 minutes.  Neither of us won.

Coach B, Coach S, and the top Huskies from
the Reno meet

Varsity Girls Race
We have been hit by a rash of muscle strains, so the word of the day was CAUTION. I instructed our girls to go out controlled, at something similar to tempo pace.  At the start of the race, our girls settled in toward the back of what was a pretty small field.  However, by the end of the first lap of the 3 lap course, Abbi, Kinsey, and Esme had moved up to 6th, 7th, and 8th place. Jazmine, Gabby, Teagan and Priscilla had also moved up in the field.

The runners disappeared around the back side of "Shadow Mountain" for the race's second lap and when they emerged, Abbi and Kinsey had taken over 1st and 2nd place.  It looked like that is where they would stay.  Unfortunately, during the 3rd lap Kinsey rolled her ankle and started to fall back.  Abbi was going to wait for her, but Kinsey told her to go ahead.  Abbi re-caught the leader and kicked to a comfortable looking win.  Kinsey held on to Finsish 4th and Esme, nursing a tight calf, cruised into the chute in 11th place.  Jazmine and Gabby rounded out our scorers in 25th and 26th places as we held on to beat South Tahoe by one point.

Varsity Boys Race

HUSD has got to upgrade their vehicle fleet!

The strategy for the boys race was similar to the strategy for the girls race...go out kind of easy on what was a deceptively tough course, then begin to move up about 1/3 of the way into the race.

At the gun, our boys settled toward the back of the field, but by the time they had finished the first lap of Shadow Mountain, they had moved into the top 20 of 53 runners in the race.  As the boys came around for the beginning of the second lap, Carson had climbed to 5th place, Josue was in 6th, Jaymie was in 8th, and Dalton was in 10th.  At that point, it looked like Carson and Josue had a chance to catch the leaders, but on the final lap, our guys kind of ran out of gas. Carson and Josue slowed, but held on to 5th and 6th.  Jaymie fell back to 9th and Dalton held on to 10th.  Matthew Walton rounded out our scoring 5 in 29th place to give us a 5 point victory over Fernly of Nevada.

One of the really cool things about the meet was that each race winner got a fairly lengthy interview from the meet announcer.

Abbi's interview is posted below.

Abbi's Post Race Interview

Time Trial #2 and Updated All Time Lists

Labor day weekend, time to catch up on some of the team's early season activities.

Time trial #2 was a huge success.  We really shook up our All time top 10 list, putting 3 new boys on the board and 5 new girls.  We also ran the top ever team times for both the boys' and girls teams.  This bodes very well for us for this season as the previous #1 girls team went on to finish 2nd in section and 17th at state (last year) and the previous #1 boys team was 3rd place in the section in 2013, just missing state in perhaps the toughest D4 SJS finals ever.

Boys TT
A large pack of 5 boys reached the mile mark together in 5:22-5:23.  Dalton, Jaymie, Carson, Josue, and Christian all were rolling together like a TEAM!  Dalton was just coming back from a tweak to his calf, and had missed about 10 days of running. At the mile it was apparent that he was feeling the effects of his time cross training on the bike.

After hitting the mile, the boys decided to really get after it.  Josue and Carson accelerated hard to clock 5:07 and 5:10 for the second mile, finishing in 10:29 and 10:32 respectively, to move to #3 and #5 on our all time lists.  Christian pretty much helt his pace during the second mile and finished in 10:43 to move to #7 on our all time list.  The 2016 boys were better than the 2013 boys at every spot in  the top 5 except for the #1 spot (Zach Morrett, the 2013 section champion, was top at the TT that year).

2013       2016
10:11      10:29
10:36      10:32
10:57      10:43
11:04      10:58
11:18      11:16

Girls TT
Abbi Mitchell was well ahead of her teammates by the 1 mile mark, while Kinsey and Esme ran close together, followed by Jessie and then Elizette.  Abbi, Kinsey, and Esme more or less held their pace through the second half of the time trial, finishing in 12:35, 12:58, and 13:01 respectively.  These are the #2, #3, and #4 times on our all time list!  Jessie was close behind Esme and Kinsey at the mile and stayed close the rest of the way, to finish at 13:14 for #7 on our all time list.  Elizette, who had been a little further back at the mile, ran a nice negative split to finish in 13:23, for the #8 spot on our all time list.

Comparing this year's team to any other HHS girls team is like comparing apples and oranges.  Suffice to say that Ellizette at #5 this year was faster than our last year's #1 time (Kinsey ran 13:26 as our top girl last year). The 2016 team is a full 4 minutes better than was the 2015 team, that placed 2nd in the Sac Joaquin Section.  Our girls averaged just outside of 13 minutes per runner, without the services of top runner Emily Fife, who is on the mend from a lower leg strain.