We’re Going to Fresno… as Champions!

The Tartan guys and junior Lauren Justus went to the line at Saturday’s CIF-SS Finals with big expectations.  The boys team had advanced to finals for the first time, and had done so with the top time in Div. II, a GHS record 78:42.  Lauren was also coming off a big PR in prelims that brought her to the Finals starting line for the first time two.

Lauren led off in the first race of the day.  She got caught in the crowd a bit during the first mile, and was 5 seconds behind her mile split from the previous week.  She moved up a little the second mile and then made a huge charge up Reservoir Hill to move all the way up to 8th at the top.  She gave a way a few spots on the downhill, but ran to the line in 18:06, good for 11th place and a place in the State meet.

The guys a ran ambitiously in the first mile, with Anthony Castro and Kelly Hernandez running near the front as the leaders went through the half mile in 2:14!  The paid a little for this later, but the guys once again strung together a group of strong performances for the win. We scored 96 points to defeat Valencia by 23 and Loyola by 34, with another school Mt.Sac record of 78:38.

Anthony was again our leader in 15:20, with his 7th place finish earning him a medal and first team CIF honors.  He was followed by soph Austin Mendoza in a PR 15:44, and then closely by Kelly in 15:45.

The biggest performance came from junior Shin Yamamura, whose 21 second PR of 15:56 slammed the door shut.  Shin was the fastest fifth man in the race by 16 seconds, and this allowed us to put five below four on all but one team in the field.  If Shin had merely run his previous PR, we would have finished third.  So thank you, Shin.

Shin’s performance moves him 8th on the GHS All-Time Performers list, and Austin M moves up to =6th.  Lauren improved her mark but remains second on the list.

Shin also jumped to 7th performer on the 2009 SGV at Mt.Sac list, where we have an amazing five of the top seven spots on the guys list.  Lauren’s mark improved her lead on the list, which you can view here.

Complete results are here.  GHS times and splits are here: mtsac-summary-4-meets (this actually has the times and splits for all four of the meets we ran at Mt.Sac.  The SGV Tribune’s coverage of the meet is here.

On to Fresno.