I want to thank all the parents for the support at the Stanford Invite. We appreciate you driving the kids there and getting them to the race on time. It was great to have that many people cheering on the sidelines.
Thank you, Erika and all the helper parents that put together a fun pasta feed for the kids. It was a great team bonding event!
What's been Happening:
This past week, in the midst of a heat wave, we had our first league competition against Rincon Valley Christian, with all three teams earning league wins. That would be Varsity Girls, Varsity Boys and JV Boys, as there are no JV girls teams in our league. Because of the high temperatures, we didn't really have any earth shattering times, but we did have some highlights. Most of those coming from Saturday's competition at Stanford.
League Meet #1:
Our first league meet was at Spring Lake where we competed against Rincon Valley Christian. Kelseyville and Lower Lake were also competing that day. The first race of the day was comprised of the JV Boys and Varsity Girls. As is custom in our league meets, the JV Boys and the Varsity girls run together. Top ten JV Boys were: Eli Rosen-Duran (SA, 20:31); Justin Nichols (SA, 21:53); Hayden Kinney (SA, 22:20); Tristan Stillman (SA, 22:23); Chauncey Johnson (SA, 23:59); Noah Peterson (RVC, 24:47); Chris Reed (SA, 24:50); Sean Kneeland (SA, 25:10); Zach Tracy (RVC, 26:17).
The highlights for this race was SA sweeping the first 5 places. Johnny lead the way with a very fine PR of 20:31. Another fine performance came from Chris Reed who had a PR time of 24:50. Score: SA 15 – RVC Inc.
In the varsity girls race Katy and Kiana placed first and second. Both girls ran very controlled races, saving their big efforts for their race in Stanford on Saturday. Placing 6th over all was Claire in a PR of 24:33. Seventh place was Katherine in 26:27 seasonal best. Score: SA 15 -RVC Inc.
The second race of the day was the Varsity Boys. Because of the heat, we had all six boys run together through the first 2 miles and at the end they went 1 through 6 in the race. Lead by Jacob (18:37), then Jax (18:38), Aaron (18:39), Austin O. (18:40), Patrick (18:46), Austin G. (19:22). And they still saved plenty of energy for their race on Saturday. Score: SA 15 – RVC Inc.
Stanford Invite:
At the Stanford Invitational we sent two teams consisting of our top seven girls and top seven boys. Before their race, the boys seemed relaxed, yet confidant, ready to take on the best teams in the state and even a few teams from out of state. When it was all said and done the boys placed third overall, beating the Urban team which was ranked one place ahead of them in the last NCS rankings. This should move them up one or two spots and I wouldn't be surprised if they were ranked second or third when the next rankings come out. The boys were lead by Jacob (17:11) in 14th overall with a 32 second PR. Next came Jax (17:12) with a 14 second PR. Our third runner for the day was Aaron (17:50) in 34th place after running a very intelligent race. Following Aaron was Austin O. (17:53), who continues to compete well, coming in 36th place. Our 5th runner was Patrick (17:56) in another amazing effort for 38th place. Number 6 runner of the day was Morgan (19:14) in 96th. Even though Morgan was running with a sore back he had a 1:20 PR. Our seventh runner was Austen G. (19:18) who continues to show nice improvement, coming in 100th place. This puppy wants to get off the porch and run with the big dogs. There were 150 boys in the race and 18 teams. All seven boys had great last miles and they each managed to pass several other athletes in the final stretch. Nice team running boys! The best kick of the day goes to Patrick.
In the girls' race, Katy Lee (18:45) came in third overall with a 34 second PR over last year. Katy's goal is to run 6 min mile pace for a 5k and this race averaged 6:03. No doubt she will reach her goal soon. Our second girl was Kiana (21:06) in 33rd place, a 43 second improvement over last year. Nice running Kiana! The team was rounded out by Amy (25:21) in 111, which was a 5k PR. Next was Yzzy (26:05) in 118th place, also a 5k PR. Next was Katherine (28:25) in 126. Our 6th runner was Emily (31:31) for 131st. The 7th runner, Clare, on our team only made it about 50 yards before she took a spill, hurting her knee. She was unable to finish the race. We hope she will be back out running soon.
What’s coming up:
This coming week we will be hosting a league meet on our home course at SA on Thursday against St. Vincents. The other two teams that will be there are Fort Bragg and Kelseyville. We are looking for parent volunteers to help us with the meet. There are positions available for course monitors and finish line crew. The work is so easy that we will take people with masters, or even doctors. Volunteers should be at the school by 3:45 PM. The meet will start at 4 PM.
For those of you who saw the meet at Del Oro High School for next Saturday on the schedule – it is no longer on our schedule, so you parents can all take a break next weekend. (Athletes can still go out and run.)
Some Background:
Now that we have started the league meets, it seems like a good time to discuss how this cross country competition stuff works.
Our school belongs to the Central Mountain Conference. The CMC is comprised of 12 small schools. All these schools are Division 4 (500-1150 students) or Division 5 (less than 500 students.) The CMC is broken up into 2 leagues, CMC-North and CMC-South. We will compete against each of the other teams in our league (CMC-So) once during the season.
Our meets are double, dual meets. Four teams come to compete: 2 from the north and 2 from the south. Although all 4 teams run together, we only score against the other team in our league. For instance, on Wednesday the meet was attended by SA, RVC, Lower Lake and Kelseyville. It was SA vs RVC and Lower Lake vs Kelseyville. SA beat RVC in both the Boys and Girls Varsity races, so they have one win credited in both the boys and girls league competition. (Although it is nice to know that if all 4 teams had been scored as one competition, SA would have still won ;-)
The league championship and the conference championship will be decided at the same race, at the end of the season. The league championship will be the team who has the most wins in both the dual meets and the championship meet combined. So a perfect season would be 10-0. 5 wins during the dual meets and beating all 5 other team in the same league at the championship.
The conference championship will the the overall winner of the 12 teams at the championship meet.
After conference, the varsity teams get to go to North Coast Sectionals. At NCS we no longer compete against the teams in our league or conference but all the Division 5 schools in our Section. The top teams and individuals from NCS get to go to the State meet.
Scoring: In cross country smaller is better when it comes to scores. A team can have up to 7 runners. The top 5 runners count in the score. The score is simply a sum of all the runners' places. So a perfect score would be 15 (1+2+3+4+5.) The 6th and 7th runners on a team do not score, but can help a lot by pushing members of the other team further back in the pack. A team with less than 5 runners cannot score and are indicated as Inc. (incomplete.)
