Seventeen of our varsity runners got out of school early on Friday to make a 3-hour trip down to Clovis for a state course preview at Rough Rider Invitational held at Woodward Park.
One of the goals for the girls was to shore up #4-7 and try to pull everyone along to hold a rigorous pace. Kirsten Ransford ran “point” for the group in the middle portion of the race. Jessica Becker, Natalie Eppler, and Grace Pierce were working pretty hard to keep the pack tight. But the girls all managed it very well, all four crossing the line within 3 seconds of each other. We’ll see if we can launch one or two of them ahead to tighten the scoring gap from #4 up to #3.
Speaking of #3 … Brooke Giorgi paced the youngest member of the varsity team, freshman Katie Kopec, just a few steps behind Grace Lathrop. All 3 ran even stronger than at Del Oro, so our overall scoring dynamic is improving (hopefully more by section finals). Katie ended up moving ahead to finish with Grace, both at 18:51 (PR for Katie) in 7th and 8th place, and Brooke crossed in 12th (19:06 and a PR). Our front 3 outscored all other teams’ front 3’s. Overall, Whitney girls finished 3rd in a competitive meet that featured 30 scoring varsity teams.
Whitney’s varsity men placed 3rd as well. Austin Vasquez did battle with the top pack, eventually placing 4th. Ethan Dodge ran a bit more conservatively in the first half, then surged past runners to an impressive final half mile in 2:18 to take 6th in a new lifetime PR for 5K in 15:41. Brenden Jacoby was 24th, also hitting a new PR in 16:23. Jason Finta ran his best 5K of the season, clocking 16:33 which is his new PR. Byron Chadwick and Jacob Harbert went 16:52 and 16:53. This was a huge 40-second PR for Jacob! Aidan Ransford hit 17:00.4, just a half second away from breaking the coveted 17-minute barrier at Woodward park. And Aidan Redding was also very close at 17:05. Both Aidan’s hit PR’s.
With a couple of our top 5 runners lowering their 5K marks, the overall team time of the 2019 Whitney Varsity XC mens team now sits at 1:19:43, breaking the elusive 1:20 barrier, which is 16:00 per runner, average. We are now at 15:57 avg per runner.
This table shows the improvement of many of our individual varsity runners, which of course translates into greater team success. Both teams, men and women, have demonstrated by several metrics to be faster this year than each state team from last year. Here, the year-to-year comparison shows the drops in time for each runner. The scoring five data is derived from runners #1-5 last year and runners #1-5 this year, which may include a couple different runners as the top 5 scorers have changed slightly between 2018 and 2019.
