Show Up, Warm Up, Go Fast, Go Home

The Tartans’ season came to a disappointing end today as we failed to advance in the CIF Div. II prelims.  We finished fifth in our heat, seven points behind the final qualifying spot.

The conditions slowed times for all the teams, so there were no PR’s for our guys.  Our leading runner was soph Anthony Castro, who was 13th in our heat in 16:10.  The best performances came from sophs Kelly Hernandez and Shin Yamamura. Kelly led our team for part of the race and finished as our third man in 16:26, only 4 seconds off his PR.  Shin finished in 17:08, just 6 seconds off of his PR.

Special honor goes to seniors Christopher Ramsey (20th/16:20), Corey Bullock (27th/16:30), and Joel Gillet, for whom this was their last cross country race at GHS.  Chris is one of our captains and in his first full year of XC placed himself several times among the top all-time GHS performers, topped by his second place, 16:00 finish at the Sierra League Finals.  Corey fought back bravely from off season lung surgery only to battle nagging leg injuries all season.  He was second in both Sierra Cluster meets and ran especially well with his 15:55 for 5k at the Clovis Invitational.  Joel, an alternate on today’s team, was another of our captains and also battled injuries all year.  His best performance came early with a strong 16:19 at the Woodbridge invitational.

And so a disappointing ending to what was still one of the finest years ever for GHS XC.  Five of our seven runners return next year, so guys, get ready to take the next step!

GHS results are here, and you can download a pdf with the times and splits here: 11-15-08-cif-prelims.pdf Complete results (lots of pdf’s!) are here.

Our win at League Finals made us one of the three teams from the Sierra League to advance to CIF Prelims.  We will compete in one of the four heats of Div II, and hope to gain one of the top four spots in our heat which will qualify us for the following week’s CIF Finals.

Prelims (and Finals) will once again be held on the famous Mt. Sac Cross Country Course.  The details are similar to what they were for the Mt. Sac Invite:  Parking is on the north side of Temple and costs $5, entry is through the gates at the north end of the stadium, admission is $7, $5 for HS students with ID and kids.  Arrive early!  The lines at the ticket windows are long and move slowly.

We are in Race 5, the third heat of Div. II, which is scheduled to go off at 8:41am.  We are one of the four favorites on paper to advance, along with Claremont and CIF ranked Saugus and North Torrance.  Other contenders are University, Arroyo and Camarillo.  But we don’t run the races on paper, so we’ve gotta run well.

Last year at this meet, Thomas Finnigan (’08) ran 15:26, despite picking up an injury during the race, to advance to the Finals as an individual.  The team did not advance in a historically fast year, but Corey Bullock did become only the fifth Tartan ever to run under 16:00 at Mt. Sac with his time of 15:57.  This year Corey, Anthony Castro, Austin Goodheart, Kelly Hernandez, Neill Netzeband, Christopher Ramsey, and Shin Yamamura hope to be the first Glendora team ever to advance to CIF finals.

Go get ‘em, guys.

Getting caught up - thanks to Steve and Theresa Goodheart

Getting caught up - thanks again to Steve Brunett

(View the complete photo gallery from the Daily Bulletin here)

What a thrilling day!  Great times - almost our entire team PR’d - on the famous Mt. Sac course.  Great conditions.  But most of all, a great result - our varsity team are Sierra League champions!  We defeated Ayala in 26-29 thriller in which the top eleven runners came from our two teams!

All five of the scoring varsity runners played a key role.  The photo above shows our critical 2-3-4 finish by senior Christopher Ramsey (16:00), soph Anthony Castro and junior Austin Goodheart (both 16:01).  Chris’ time put him 7th on the GHS All-Time Performer list, while Austin moved to =8th on the list.  But just as important was the 8th place finish by senior Corey Bullock, fighting off injury to finish in 16:21, and the huge PR by soph Kelly Hernandez, whose 16:22 for 9th put him just ahead of Ayala’s fifth runner and clinched our victory.  Our six and seven runners, soph Shin Yamamura and senior Joel Gillett also shook off injuries to finish 22nd and 29th, respectively, both in PR’s!

The Tartans were well represented at the front of the lower level races as well.  Junior Neill Netzeband was a narrow second in the JV in a PR 17:03, while the team was third.  In the Frosh/Soph division, freshman Austin Mendoza and soph Tim McDougall led the guys to a strong second place finish.  Austin was second overall in 17:17 while Tim was fifth in 17:48.

All buy three of our thirty-seven runners PR’d on this tough, tough course.  The biggest improvements from the earlier Mt. Sac Invite came from soph Victor Solorzano (- 2:12), senior Robert Haburn (- 2:02) and soph Raymond Shipman (- 1:41).

It was a great day for the Tartans.  Special honor goes to seniors Joel Cloud, Brian Arikawa, Robert Haburn, Anthony Pussman, and Brandon Gillett, who all ran their final XC race for GHS.

Here’s a newspaper article which tells the story mostly from Ayala’s point of view, from the SGV Tribune and Inland Daily Bulletin.

GHS results are here.  Complete results, now including video of the varsity race, are here at DyeStatCal.com  You can download a pdf with times and splits here: 11-5-08-sierra-final.pdf

Champions!

Important Update:  The meet is postponed until tomorrow - Wednesday, 11/5.  All other details remain the same.

Many of our guys started on July 1st (a few on their own a couple of days earlier).  Others started along the way.  But all of our training has pointed toward Tuesday, Novemeber 4th, on the famous XC course at Mt. Sac - the 2008 Sierra League Finals.

All of our athletes will race tomorrow - J.V. at 2:19, Frosh/Soph at 3:22, and Varsity at 4:25.  Admission is free, but parking will be two or three dollars in the lots on the south side of Temple, northwest of the stadium.  All athletes will be excused from school during lunch, the bus for the JV and F/S athletes will leave Circle Drive at 12:50pm, and for Varstiy athletes the bus will leave at 1:30pm.  All athletes must travel to the meet on the bus, and must be fully dressed in your athletic gear to get on the bus.

Tartan boys took the top individual honors last year with Thomas Finnigan (’08) winning the Varsity race and Neill Netzeband taking the Frosh/Soph division.  This year, we go into the final meet tied with Ayala, so the winner of the Varsity race will be league champions.  The top seven varsity runners will designated as the First Team All-Sierra League team, and the next seven will be Second team.  We expect to be well represented in both groups.

Let’s make our last race together as a complete team our best race.

Twenty-nine Tartans competed at last Saturday’s gigantic Mt. San Antonio College Cross Country Invitational on the famed three hills of the home of Southern California XC.  Fifteen of those athletes competed on the course for the first time, and all had the same comment - “Wow, those hills are big”.

Our top individual performance came from sophomore Anthony Castro, who became only the fifth Tartan athlete to break sixteen minutes on this course.  His 15:49, sixteenth place finish in the tough DII race makes him the fourth best All-Time GHS Performer on the Mt.Sac course.  Sophomore Kelly Hernandez had a big PR of 16:54 to be our fourth man, and this despite being knocked down in the opening meters of the race.  Our Varsity team performance was solid, not outstanding, but fast enough that all of our seasonal goals are still within reach.

Our top individual finishers were Anthony and freshman Austin Mendoza, whose 17:58 course debut also placed him 16th in the frosh race.  The biggest improvements from last season came from sophs Ryan Kabala (-2:30) and Chris Shaffer (-2:44).

This was one of the strongest XC meets in the courtry, and you can read about all of it at the big DyeStatCal coverage page, along with the video reviews at Flotrack.  You can find complete meet results here, and the results for our specific races here: JV, Varsity, Frosh, Soph.  GHS results are here, and you can down load pdf with all of our times and splits here: 10-24-08-mtsac.pdf

Next up is the Sierra League Finals meet on Tuesday, November 4th, again at Mt.SAC.  This will be the final meet of the year for our non-varsity athletes, and the chance to fulfill our first Varsity seasonal goal - a league championship.  Let’s be ready.

This is a big meet.  Almost every school in SoCal runs here.  Teams fly in from around the state, even around the country to run here.  The meet is so big, it takes two days to run it - Divs III, IV, and V on Friday, the bigger schools on Saturday.  It’s so big, there are huge video boards near the start line showing different parts of the course.  It’s so big, the three giant hills on the course all have names.

Since almost everyone runs here at least once in the season, Mt. Sac is the standard for SoCal XC runners.  When most runners talk about their real PR, they’re talking about their Mt.Sac PR.

The best PR among our returning runners is senior Corey Bullock’s 15:57 (5th performer AT GHS) at last year’s CIF Prelims.  In this meet last year, Thomas Finnigan (’08) finished 4th in the Individual Sweepstakes race, in a GHS course record time of 15:16.  Neill Netzeband’s 8th place in the Div I sophomore race and Anthony Castro’s 3rd in the freshman race were the other top performances on the day.

This year, our JV’s will race at 7:14, the Varsity will be in the top Div II race at 8:25, the freshmen race at 10:45 and the sophomores go at 11:26.  There is both an admission and parking costing, which you can read about by following the “2008 Annotated Schedule” link on this site, where you’ll also find a load of information about the course.  Please Note: There is major construction and major traffic delays on the west side of the campus at Grand and Temple.  The means you should arrive from Temple, traveling west from the 57 freeway.

Mt.Sac is a tough course, but we’re a tough team, so this should be a great day for the Tartans.

An excellent day for the Tartans, as 17 of our 19 athletes set PR’s for flat 3 mile courses in the Bell Gardens Invitational at Legg Lake in South El Monte.

Our varsity runners took the day off to train, so the spotlight moved to our younger runners in the four grade level races  The top finisher was freshman Austin Mendoza who was third in a strong frosh field with big 16:39 PR.  We also had top 10’s from Tim McDougall, 17:14 (PR) for eigth in the soph race, and 18:05 for tenth from freshman Patrick Vincent in his first flat 3 mile race.

The biggest PR’s came from two of our beginning runners - senior Robert Haburn improved 2:36 and freshman Brian Loh improved 1:44 from their times at Woodbridge.

Complete GHS results are here, and GHS times with splits are here: 10-18-08-bell-gardens.pdf (This meet normallly doesn’t post their results on the internet, but we’ll link to them here if they do.)

We’ve posted a new training schedule, updated through League Finals on November 4.  You can download a copy here: training schedule-1.3

Be sure to take a look at the link on the right “2008 Annotated Schedule“, which now includes complete information on Saturday’s Bell Gardens meet, Mt.Sac and League Finals.

And remember that Saturday’s meet at Bell Gardens is open to all non-varsity athletes.