South Bay and Dana Hills Invites 22 and 23 Sept 2017

For the second week in a row we split the team between 2 meets. Last Saturday we sent many of our varsity runners to the Dana Hills High School Invite at Dana Point to run in some of the faster races, while others sat out the weekend or ran locally at the South Bay Invite in Rohr Park hosted by Sweetwater High School.  The Dana Hills race had around 5000 entries from all over the state with grade-level races from three divisions. Teresa Perez and Madden Hundley, because they had fast performances at the Woodbridge invite the previous week, were allowed in the Division I/Senior race. This race features seniors from the largest schools as well as individuals from any grade-level who have proven that they can run with this group. Perez finished 8th overall with a time of 17:09 followed by Hundley who finished 96th in 19:20 out of 207 finishers. All races at this meet were over the same fast 3-mile course. The rest of our races were in the D-II division which I had us moved up to from D-III for better competition.  In the girls' freshman race Madden's sister, Abigail Hundley, finished 17th out of 183 finishers with a time of 20:16.  The best performance for the boys was turned in by Brad Busby who placed 10th in the Junior race with a time of 15:54 followed by Connor Jaynes who clocked 16:26 while placing 22nd out of 215 finishers. Ian Hurlburt had a nice race in the senior boys' race in which he placed 34th in 16:22 out of 195 finishers. In the boys' sophomore race Cole Mullins ran 16:47 while placing 28th out of 235 finishers. Finally, in the boys' freshman race Grant Hawthorne placed 21st out of 246 finishers with a time of 17:40.

 

The previous day, on Friday at the South Bay Invite, our top performance was turned-on by freshman Jessica Ehret who placed 9th in the girls' varsity race with a time of 16:45 over the 2.5-mile girls' course. She was followed by Natalya Gomez who clocked 17:13 to place 21st out of 157 finishers. I placed Ehret in the varsity race rather than the frosh/soph race for better competition. The top finisher in the frosh/soph race was 26 seconds slower. The other girls running on Friday were Abby Fabiszak (20:20), Josie Morrissey (22:01), Kate Ruiz (22:27), and Emma Kilfoil (23:18).  The three boys running in the 5000-meter boys' races were Chris Russell (19:05), Nicholas Inzunza (21:10), and James Cook (22:16).