Our final invitational of the 2021 season was held at Gibson Ranch this past Saturday. The course and weather provided great conditions for race day. As usual, Whitney runners performed as one of the top programs. This meet was a nice tune-up for SFL League Championships to be held this Friday.
FROSH SOPH GIRLS
Freshman Alishia Elie led the Lady Wildcats by finishing 7th place individually with a 7-flat per mile effort. “K2”, the familiar tandem of Katie Hart and Kaylee Holyoak raced together and finished in the top 15. Taylor Bettencourt and Mandy Rao paired up to round out our top 5, crossing in 31st and 32nd out of 80 runners. The freshman quartet of Mallory Turner, Sophia Sauer, Mykenzie Holyoak, and Brooklynn Casey helped provide the depth to ensure a 3rd place team finish overall.
FROSH SOPH BOYS
With a number of our top sophomores running the 5K distance in the JV race, we still had 13 runners in the frosh soph race. Freshman Tyler Kubota is improving by leaps and bounds, and took yet another leap on Saturday to finish first for Whitney, catching usual frontrunners sophomores Peyton Boyd and Landon Wibbeler, who finish right behind Tyler for a strong trio to begin our scoring. Victor Needham and Mikey Payan crossed the line about a half minute back. Charlie Peek, Akanis Surapak, and Brady Quinn made up the next Whitney pack. Max Bowen and Aaron Humphries worked with each other to be our next Wildcats to finish, followed by Jack Regan, Carter McBride, and Joey Gloria, with still over a dozen runners behind. Whitney placed 8th in team scoring.
VARSITY GIRLS
There were two races where Whitney finished first as a team, starting with varsity girls. Each of our 6 girls in this race ran very well, either equaling a lifetime PR, or breaking it–by a bunch in a couple cases. Junior Katie Kopec, who has been training extremely well lately, hitting some very fast paces in workouts, put it to the test at Gibson Ranch. Running most of the 5K all alone in 3rd place, Katie pushed a 5:53 per mile pace and finished exactly one-tenth of a second off of her school record of 18:13. Ava Kopec also equaled her PR, coming within a few seconds of breaking 19 minutes, and placed 11th. Grace Scott, who just a week ago at Foresthill hit a half-minute PR, hit another half-minute PR, knocking more than a minute off her 5K lifetime best in the last 8 days, placed 20th, nearly breaking 20 minutes at 20:02. Freshman Izzy Soto improved by 40 seconds on her previous best to place 31st, and was the 5th fastest freshman in the race. Sophie Bowen placed 40th with a new PR of 21:43. Tyler Williams PR’d by half a minute, and Kylee Wibbeler came within a few seconds of hitting her best ever as well. Whitney beat Northern Section state power Chico by 2 points to claim the trophy.
VARSITY BOYS
In our final tune-up before league championships this coming Friday, Whitney’s varsity boys hit a few PR’s at Flat Sac. Top Wildcat Mateo DelGadillo was 8th and hit the fastest 5K of any Whitney runner this year at 16:25. Teammate Nick Herrmann was just a few seconds more at 16:29 in 11th place. Cole Jamieson and Hunter Schwab came in together, both in the top 25, with Hunter eclipsing his previous PR. Brandon Olah, who trains very well in the top pack, hadn’t yet raced his best 5K this season, but that changed at Flat Sac as he hit a time of 17:34 which is more in line with his capabilities–and a big PR for him. Callum Turner rounded out the squad just 10 seconds behind Brandon. The team placed either 2nd or 3rd, depending on which results you look at :/
JV BOYS
This particular race proved to showcase Whitney’s most stacked roster, as we had our top 6 sophomores run the 5K distance, four of them for the first time. Joel Tajiri and Noah Lopez, who have competed varsity for us at league, ran side by side and wore down all pursuers. Neither hit a PR from the league meet, rather managed a controlled 1-2 finish. Only one other runner broke up our top 4 as David Hurren and Brendan Whitmore crossed together in 4th and 5th place. Only two other opposing runners managed to get into the top 10 as Noah Reed, Aidan Barkve, and Perry Hutchinson crossed in 7th, 9th, and 10th. Dario Ruscica was 12th, Connor Jacoby was 14th, and Jaden Rapp was 17th, with Dario and Connor hitting lifetime PR’s. Jaden is coming off illness, and actually ran a faster time than expected. Levi Chadwick, Corbin Peek, Alex Wan, and Tyler Herceg kept the maroon flow going, all contributing to a dominant Whitney win by more than 60 points in team scoring.
JV GIRLS
The final race of the day was JV girls. Consistently improving senior and captain Ashlyn Fujioka hit her 3rd consecutive lifetime 5K PR at 22:22, climbing the ladder from back in the pack to rise all the way up to 3rd place. Ashanti Elie held off some challengers late to finish 4th overall, also PRing. Cailin Fitzgerald ran a very solid race to finish 16th, with teammate Rachel Tajiri, battling some sore shins, not far behind. Anna Giorgi came in as Whitney’s 5th runner, helping ensure a strong score and a 2nd place team finish. Jaqui Alvarez ran a gutsy race to achieve a personal best by a minute and a half.
Next up for the Wildcats is SFL Championships to be held at William Jessup this coming Friday. For the boys, Folsom is currently the top ranked D1 team and will be tough to beat, as well as Rocklin typically scoring near Whitney this season. On the girls side, it’s not even funny. The SFL has Oak Ridge, which is ranked 11th in the nation and first in the entire Sac Joaquin Section. We also have Granite Bay and Del Oro, who are ranked 2nd and 3rd in the section–all divisions combined. So although our varsity girls are ranked solidly in the top 10 overall in the section, placing 4th as a team in this league will be a huge accomplishment. We’ll see how we do at Jessup. Go ‘Cats!