The freshmen boys proved in a meet what they've shown in practice: they are the best freshmen class of distance runners in Lick history. They easily defeated teams from larger schools in the Frosh race at the Ed Sias Invitational in Martinez. Led by the pack of Stephen Page, Matt Jenkins, Gordy Webb, and Zach Oji, they needed only a decent finish from their 5th and final point scorer. Ivan Barrales provided much more than that. He took 17th place (higher than most teams 2nd runner) and was followed closely by Logan Pierce (18th) to assure us the win. The low score of 45 easily outdistanced Maria Carillo (92) and Bishop O'Dowd (133).
For the first time in over a decade and a girls team win in the Division V race at Stanford Invitational, Lick came home with a winning team! The freshmen boys proved in a meet what they've shown in practice: they are the best freshmen class of distance runners in Lick history. They easily defeated teams from larger schools in the Frosh race at the Ed Sias Invitational in Martinez.
The Frosh boys ran as a lead pack and never faltered. Running in the group just behind the top runners, our pack of Stephen, Matt, Gordy, and Zach gave us a presence up front unmatched by any other team. Being at a new invitational against many bigger schools and schools whose uniforms we don't readily pick up, it was hard to tell for sure whether we were winning. I knew we had 3 runners ahead of anyone else's and Zach was definitely ahead of other teams' 4th runners, but we weren't sure how the teams with runners in the top 5 were doing behind us. As it turned out, most of the top 5 was made of runners on incomplete or weaker teams. And Ivan was ahead of every other team's 5th runner (as was Logan).
From a coaching perspective, the most exciting aspect of our win was the spread of only 38 seconds between our #1 and #5 runner. The mark of a good team is the time gap between its runners. The closer the pack, the harder it is for team's with weaknesses at 4 and 5 to triumph over us. That was evident Saturday. Our 3-4-5-6 runners were better, on a position v. position basis, than any other school's and that is due to their running so well together as a group.
It is even more exciting to think about those runners mixed in with our juniors and seniors. As good as a 38-second gap is, I suspect that with Michael Kreher (out due to SAT prep work), Connor Jordan, and Corey Robinson running with the freshmen our spread would have been even better, possibly as little as 10 seconds and likely less than 25 from nos. 1 to 7. That is superb. If that group can all move up toward the top 3rd of the Division V races, then we will be a very, very good team.
The other team races couldn't match the opening Frosh race, but a number of good performances were turned in. The Soph Boys took 19th in a field of 34 teams; the Varsity (without captains Michael Kreher and William Worm) took 20th out of 23 teams. Due to illnesses, our JV boys did not field a full 5-man team and didn't receive a team score.
The fastest time of the day for Lick was turned in by junior Connor Jordan in the varsity race. Corey Robinson led the Soph team in that race with our 3rd fastest time of the day (behind Connor and freshman Stephen Page).
Even running on a much more difficult two-mile course than our time trial course, a number of runners ran much faster times. Special kudos go to freshmen Minh Nguyen and Nicholas Scheele with Minh taking over a minute off his time and Nicholas just under a minute. Senior Jalen Allen and freshman Cameron Rosen also dropped their time by a considerable amount.
A host of other boys runners took time off their two-mile times. So many, in fact, that they need to all be mentioned and the point reiterated: this was a tough course for running a fast time. The others who were faster are James Rich, Adam Theriault-Shay, Justin Peters, Clay Tilton, and Zack Katz. Others were close: Sophs Kyle Lim and Tony Martinez (both with strong finishing kicks), Corey, freshman Frankie Lewis, and junior Lucien Muir--who exactly matched his time. The only exceptions were runners who had to handle recovering from illness or injury or a rough week. The following runners ran well considering what they had to overcome this week: Sean Mock, Tayeb Zaidi (injury), Jack Crawford (illness), Tywen Kelly, and Ben Jenkins (ankle injury).
In all, it was a very encouraging first meet for the whole boys team.