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