We had a terrific group of 43 Pumas make the trip to Crystal Springs today! First, thanks everyone for showing up on time for our early 6:30AM bus departure. The themes for today were to have fun, shake things up a little, and to run our stronger young runners down in their own class races. Here are just a few race highlights:
- Boys Sophomore Team came in 3rd (out of 16 teams) in a very tight contest (56 points to Cupertino's 47 and Bellermine's 50). Colin, Austin Rivas, and Emilio earned t-shirts (with top 15 finishes), and we put all 10 of our runners among the top 31 finishers in the race (out of a total 182 in the race!). Colin got 3rd in the race - doing a nice job of moving up in the 2nd half (for those that missed Colin's death defying start - check out this incredible photo!)Great job to all the Soph guys - let's see what this group can do when we get Tim Wuu healthy and back in the mix.
- Girls Frosh Soph easily won their division - and Lauren K, Heidi, Taylor, and Gretel all won t-shirts. Maddie Dippel ran a fine race to finish out the Puma scoring. Similar to the Soph Boys, we put 7 finishers in the top 32 girls in the race (out of 119 total). Lauren K was 5th in race, 7th fastest freshman girl in all races of the day, and 25th fastest overall on the day. Kelly, Ashley, Jessica, Brittiney and Myriah also had strong performances. Congratulations also to Lauren Toomey who completed her first ever race (84th out of 119 girls in the race!) The accomplishment of this team (see photo above) is even more noteworthy considering 3 of our stronger Frosh / Soph contributors (Brynna, Sophia, and Sidney) were not racing today.
- Boys Frosh - Jose Armando was 2nd and Harrison took 8th in this race. Kai Faust ran well in the first cross country race of his career (finishing a very respectable 120 out of 208 competitors!).
- Boys JV - Peter (aka "Enrique"), Schuyler, and Sam led our team to an 11th place finish (out of 17 teams).
- Boys Varsity - finished fourth, led by James Ramirez (7th in race, 19th fastest overall) and Dan Hauptman (18th in race, 39th overall). Also noted - James Nicklas ran his first varsity race!
- Girls Varsity - Cara Curtin won a t-shirt with her 9th place finish (and 9th place overall in all races). Margie and Sarah T also contributed solid efforts
- Girls JV - Carolyn led our squad, with Jamaeca and Desiree following with steady beginning to end efforts.
- Unofficial Combined Results - if results from all the various races were combined into one virtual race, Maria Carrillo finished 3rd among 36 girls teams (behind Aptos and SF Univesity) and 3rd out of 51 boys teams (behind Bellermine and San Benito).
Here is a link to some great photos of the meet (courtesy of Eric Graham).
After the racing, our bus stopped at Ocean Beach in San Francisco so that we could eat lunch and play some beach games. Rolling back into the MCHS parking lot at 5PM - the Pumas had completed another memorable and fun day out!
