JV Girls Race
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| Sullivan with about 600m to go |
Kylee Sullivan led the Huskies to their second straight JV girls league title. Kylee has been slowed by nagging calf issues on and off this season, but her 3rd place finish in a season best time led a parade of Huskies that saw all but one runner record either a season best time or personal record time for 2 miles. The average improvement per girl was well over 30 seconds from the TVL mid season meet only 4 weeks prior. This shows that our girls were able to really step up their performance and race hard.
We had, in fact, moved 3 girls from the JV division into the varsity race to back fill for injured or ill varsity runners. Our depth at the JV level, which is a direct result of the fact that we have a lot of girls out who are all working really hard, allowed us to easily out distance the 2nd place Ripon team.
Briana Campos: 14:34 (PR)
Blanca Madrigal 15:00 (PR)
Sonia Juarez 15:30 (PR)
Anastasia Earnest 15:31 (PR)
Katelyn Gonzales 15:31 (PR)
Maria Yup 15:31 (PR)
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| JV pack heading for home. |
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| Brussow and Cerillos |
JV Boys Race
This group was led by Silvano Mora, as they have been all season. At TVL finals, however the JV athletes were able to significantly close the gap to our #1 man. Mora placed 6th in a time of 11:58 (a one second improvement over his time from TVL 2). He was followed by Jose Cerillos in 12:44 (45 second improvement), Colton Calbreath in 12:54 (30 second improvement), David Brussow in 12:59 (23 second improvement), and Zack Centeno in 13:05.
This group had been finishing last in the TVL competitions leading up to the championships, but their improvement vaulted them up into 3rd place, only a few points out of second. This is called stepping up at the right time of the season. I'm proud of these boys for running with heart and courage!
Varsity Girls Race
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| Jasmine Barrita, Berenice Arguello, Diana Brown, Camille Haupt, Elizette Ysias, Jessie Lawrence, Esme Campos Trans Valley League Champions! |
I don't know if winning a 3rd straight league championship can ever be a bit of a let down, but this day felt very flat for the VG squad. We were missing team leaders Emily Fife and Kinsey Langely (injury and illness) and knew we'd have to run hard to beat a solid Ripon team. As it turns out, Ripon was mentally beaten before even taking the starting line after their #1 girl had to pull out of the meet as well. Up front, the race seemed to be nothing more than a tempo run, with girls slowly dropping out of the lead pack. 3 of our normal top 5 (Elizette Ysias, Esmeralda Campos, and Jessie Lawrence were able to place 1st, 4th, and 6th overall to bring in enough single digit placings to put us on track for the crown. It was up to Rookie Camille Haupt and veteran Diana Brown to close out the scoring for us. Haupt was 11th and Brown 14th in a solid PR time of 23:27. These two newbies to the varsity squad provided the scoring advantage over Ripon. When the scores were added up, we had a comfortable 36-49 margin.
Varsity Boys Race
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| Hoach and Ramos, early on. |
This race provided the most exciting battle for an individual title that I've ever seen in the TVL! Athletes from 5 of the 6 teams in league all had a shot at the individual win and there were 11 guys in contention for the win with 600 still to go. Austin Hoach and Miguel Ramos took full advantage of the fitness they've been building all season to each battle for the individual win. Both made strong moves during the second mile to try and break away from the field. On this day, nobody was strong enough to break away until the very end of the race, where Ramon Rosas of Riverbank eeked out a narrow win in 17:38 for the longer than 5k legion park course. Miguel was 3rd, only 2 seconds back and Austin placed 5th, only 4 seconds behind the winner.
Unfortunately for us, the rest of our squad did not bring their best efforts and any hopes we had of pulling off a massive upset in the team battle died in the first mile.
