TVL Finals Photo Album
The "regular season" has come to an end with a resounding success for Hughson Cross Country! For the first time ever, we captured both the Varsity Boys title and Varsity Girls title on the same day. In the JV races, we saw tremendous improvements as well. All in all, we had a great end to October and are ready for the big meets of November.
JV Girls Race
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| Jasmine and Kylee with less than 800 to go |
Our JV Girls were first up. This group had been beaten handily at the beginning of the season by Ripon, but had improved a ton over the last few weeks and were ready to make huge improvements. As the gun sounded, Ripon jumped to an early team lead, running 1-4 at the 800m mark. By the mile, our girls had closed in and the lead pack consisted of 3 Ripon and 3 Hughson (Jasmine Barrita, Kylee Sullivan, and Gaby Lopez). Shortly after the mile, our 3 girls moved into the lead and began to pull away. By the end of the race, Ripon was able to overtake Gaby, who ended up 7th, but Jasmine and Kylee went 1-2 in the race. Team score wise, we finished 6 points behind Ripon in 2nd place, but far ahead of 3rd place Mountain House and the rest of the league. Unfortunately, one of our top girls, Katelyn Gonzales, developed some knee pain the weekend before the meet, which prevented her from competing. When we get her back, healthy for the post season, we should be looking very good.
JV Boys Race
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| John Cabral and Joseph Powers both broke 13 minuts for the first time. |
I and the coaching staff have had the feeling that this group had been underperforming all year. That underperformance changed at TVL finals. All the athletes running on this day PRed by 1-2
minutes.....a huge feat! I had made the decision to move up our top Sophomore, Austin Hoach, to the Varsity race for Finals, but the rest of our boys competed hard, bringing home a 4th place team finish and actually placing closer in the team scores than we had at TVL 2 where Austin won the JV race overall. Sky Phillips had a massive improvement to lead the Huskies, so did top Hughson finishers: John Cabral, Lance Walton, David Brussow, and Joseph Powers. This group is the future varsity squad, so it was great to see them finish the season so well.
Varsity Girls Race
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| Varsity Girls after scoring a very low 17 points |
If you would have taken all of the seniors out of the 2015 state championship race, the Hughson Girls team would have been 9th. Based on this information, and the fact that we added quality runners since last year's state meet, has had me and the rest of the staff treating this group like what we believe they are: a California Top 10 Team. I was very sure going into the season that we would finish the TVL season on top of the league. My big concern as a coach was to get our girls racing more aggressively from the gun, so that they would be ready for the huge/fast starts at the section meet and the state meet. Our goal at TVL was to go out faster than goal pace, and try to hang on for a fast overall time. Mission Accomplished. 6 of our top 7 girls notched PRs on the day (Kinsey was running sick, but was still within 20 seconds of her best time on the Legion Park course). This gives me tremendous confidence for the VG squad moving forward.
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| Fife and Mitchell on the way to a 1-2 finish. |
Our goal of running a fast early pace was helped out by a couple of runners from other schools who tried to win the race in the first 800m. Our girls spotted them the early lead, but still went out in 18:30 5k pace. By the 1 mile mark, we had all of our 5 scorers in the top 5, with Yajira Salinas of Escalon and Alondra Hernandez of Riverbank tucked in behind. During the 2nd mile, Abigayle Mitchell and Emily Fife began to build a lead that would not be challenged the rest of the way. They went on to finish 1-2 with relatively comfortable times of 19:42 and 19:43. Elizette Ysias was 3rd overall with a huge PR of 20:33. The only question for us now, was would we score the elusive 15 points? The answer to that question was no. Alondra Hernandez of RBK, Esmeralda Campos and Kinsey Langley all entered the finishing stretch together. On this day, Alondra had the better kick and finished 2 seconds ahead of our girls who finished 5th and 6th overall with times of 20:40 and 20:41. We tried for that 15 point total all year, and on each occasion, one girl from another school was up to the task of splitting our top 5. No matter, our girls are running great and primed for the final month of the season.
Varsity Boys Race
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| VB squad, after capturing the 2016 league title. |
Since our boys captured the league title in 2003, we have never been outside of the TVL top 3. However, we have not actually WON the title since then either. 13 years of narrow misses finally came to an end this past Wednesday. Despite having 3 boys sick and one slowed by a sore knee, we managed to squeak out a narrow victory over a resurgent Escalon squad 31-37. TVL finals also saw a Hughson boy (Carson Boice) capture the individual title for the scond year in a row.
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| Calderon and Boice, just past halfway. |
As the gun sounded, Escalon's Zach Gardner jumped to an early lead, followed by Eduardo Calderon. The two passed the 800m mark in under 2:30 (about 15:30 5k pace). Like the girls, our boys were trying to work on getting out fast and holding on, and our pack came through 800m in 2:31, right on the leaders heels. By the mile mark, a leading group of 8 runners had formed, Calderon and Gardner of Escalon, Tim Cribbet and Luis Munoz of Ripon, and Carson Boice, Jaymie Jackson, Christian Lee, and Josue Esquivel from Hughson. Calderon of Escalon continued to push the pace and only Carson was able to go with him. By 2 miles, the 2 had a significant lead. Just after the 2 mile point, Carson made his move going up a little hill and was never challenged for the rest of the race. This is the point where the real drama began, though. Escalon was ahead of us at the 2 mile point, but a strong late race surge by Josue Esquivel to take 2nd overall and Austin Hoach, who had been moved up from the JV team, brought the championship to HHS!
The boys had also been trying to score a perfect 15 points all year. With the illness and injury we faced at TVL finals, we were happy to simply escape with a narrow, hard fought victory. For this group, it is time to get healthy and look at doing big things at the section meet.
