State Meet 25 November

The Cross Country season ended last on 7 November at Woodward Park in Fresno at the California State Meet with a 10th place finish for the girls and a 13th place finish for the boys in D-IV competition. Considering the hundreds of D-IV schools in the state that's not a bad result, especially for the boy's team that lost 3 of their varsity squad from last season to broken bones (Stress Fracture, Broken Toe, Broken Leg). On top of that last year's top runner and State Individual qualifier in 2016, Luke Klingenberg, developed an injury that kept him from training until the last few weeks of the season, so he wasn't nearly at 100 percent for the State Meet. A lot of credit goes to the boys who moved up to fill the gap and qualify for the state meet for the first time since 2007. Our seven finishers, in order, were Ian Hurlburt, Brad Busby, Patrick Harris, Klingenberg, Cole Mullins, Cole Nichols, and Casey Harris.  We'll lose Patrick Harris, Nichols, Hurlburt, and one of the injured runners, Danny Mineo, to graduation for next year's team.  The two returning off the injured list, Kevin May and Connor Janes plus a healthy Klingenberg and Grant Hawthorne, who just missed this year's State Team, should make a strong team next season.

 

The girl's finishers, in order, were Teresa Perez, Madden Hundley, Sofia Van Arsdale, Jessica Ehert, Naya Tamariz, Abby Hundley, and Natalya Gomez. Out of this group, we'll lose two to graduation, Tamariz, and Gomez. However, Claire Morris, who broke a toe before the CIF finals, will return to the varsity squad next season. This will leave us a varsity runner short of a full seven-girl team for next year. This season we had three fast freshmen join the team (Abby Hundley, Van Arsdale, and Ehert). Without this trio, we may not have advanced to State. Hopefully, we'll get another windfall like that next season.

  

Out of the combined results for the San Diego Section at the state meet the girls placed 9th and the boys placed 11th.

 

The two top runners on the boys and girls squad (Hurlburt and Perez) are two of the top returning 800-meter runners in the county. Hurlburt advanced to the state meet where he ran a time of 1:55.69, less than a half-second off Erik Armes' school record of 1:55.22. Perez broke the school record with a time of 2:13.38 and missed qualifying for state by a few hundredths of a second.