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