Announcement
The NCS Championships were held today at Hayward High School. Racing in Division 2 for the second year in a row, the competition was tougher than in any of the other divisions. There were three qualifying spots up for grabs for both genders, but the teams gunning for them were stronger than in any of the other divisions. The girls have been the third best team all year, but throughout the year it has been a bit of a tease because we have been healthy and our competition has not. Monte Vista was a top 15 team at the state meet last year and returned much of the group. At the beginning of the season, several of their athletes were injured and they have been slowly bringing them back, each time getting a little bit closer to us. They finally had their full team at the EBAL meet and we beat them by 1 point. We felt good about it as we didn’t feel like we ran a very good race at EBAL’s and that when we sharpened up, we would be able to outperform any fitness gains they would make. In the first mile, Monte Vista was out in front, but that was no surprise as they like to get to the front of the race. During the season, we would close the gap as the race wore on. This time was unfortunately different. Although we did catch up, we didn’t surpass them. They got big days from a couple of runners and were able to hold on for third, leaving us 14 points back. We had two individual qualifiers in the race as Hope Bergmark moved up throughout the race to finish in 9th and Derica Su finished in 11th. They ran 18:25 and 18:29. The Hayward course is still under construction, but I think that times are pretty similar to the old course. Those times would have been 3rd and tied for fourth on the top 10 list. The girls’ team time of 95:01, run by Hope, Derica, Juliette Fletcher, Becky Laurence, and Ashley Baudin would have been #3 all-time. Surabhi Kumar and Kaitlin Cartwright rounded out the top 7. For Juliette and Kaitlin, this was their last cross country race for the Dons. Both had terrific careers for us and contributed so much to the current team culture that any successes that the program has in the next few years will be in large part due to their efforts over these last few years. Both are planning to run cross country somewhere next year and when their decisions become official, I will be sure to update this page. The girls were fourth in their race, but ran the 6th fastest team time of the day. Besides Granada, San Ramon Valley, and Monte Vista in our race, they were only bested by Campolindo and Maria Carillo, all of which are traditional NCS powers.
The boys came up at 12:05 and got out to a blistering fast start. A large group came through the mile mark at 4:48. Our top two, Aidan Boyle and Jack Gray came through at about 4:55 and found themselves in 23rd and 24th. Our pack was wisely behind them and although team scores wouldn’t have looked good for us at that point, the conservative start probably contributed to our eventual strong team finish. As the race pushed into the second mile, packs of runners were beginning to suffer due to punishing early pace. Those who had been disciplined found themselves able to pass those who were undisciplined. Those teams who had planned to run at the front for as long as they could started to fall back behind our main pack. Aidan Boyle was able to capitalize, moving from 24th to 16th with about a mile to go. Jack moved up for a time, but began to struggle himself and found himself at about the place he was at the mile mark. The team behind them, just by running steady, had caught many. At this point, Dublin, Granada, and De La Salle were looking very strong, so a state meet berth looked unlikely, but Aidan was very much in the mix for an individual qualifying spot. As he entered the last hill, he was running in 15th with the two people in front of him holding the last 2 spots. He had to catch one. As they pushed over the hill, Jett Charvet of Heritage initiated the move and Aidan and the Mission San Jose athlete responded. By the bottom of the hill though, Aidan had a lot more juice left and the Mission athlete was out of gas. Aidan pushed hard home to gain the last state meet spot. He finished in 13th overall in a time of 15:38, which would have been #2 all-time on the traditional course. The boys ended up in 4th place, albeit 96 points out of 3rd with a team time of 82:15. That time would have been #8 all-time on the traditional course. The top five boys were Aidan, Jack, Aidan McCarthy, Euan Houston, and Jacob Lawrence. That group includes a junior, 3 sophomores, and a freshman. Rounding out the top 7 were seniors Matthew Duret and Hayden Talbert, who concluded their 4 year cross country careers for the Dons. Matt ran a 57 second PR on the course from last year, which goes to show what can happen when we can train healthy for even a small period of time. For Hayden, it was not the final race that he deserved as he struggled to the finish, but that does not diminish the job that he has done this year, captaining this young Dons team, nor the progress he has made as an athlete over the last four years. The boys’ team time was the 11th best of the day in all divisions.
Up next is the California State Meet where Hope and Derica will represent the girls at 10:35 and Aidan will represent the boys at 12:05 at Woodward Park next weekend.
After that a contingent of boys will continue on to run the Footlocker Regional Championships at Mt. SAC.
Full results of today’s race can be found at http://www.rtspt.com/events/cif/2017Meets/ncsxc/
