We like to foster our partnership with our neighboring campus, William Jessup University. One way we do this is to co-host a combined high school and college meet. This meet also serves as a league championship course preview, as the Jessup trails will be the site of SFL Finals at the end of October.
Frosh Soph Girls
Just 3 days prior to this meet, Addison Ewers and Sophie Hutchinson paired up to run a great race at our first league meet and finished 3rd and 4th respectively. At the Jessup Invitational, Addison and Sophie did the exact same thing, placing 3rd and 4th respectively. Manaswin Kotte nearly broke into the top 20, placing 21st. Rae Britton, Ava Hurren, and Kayla Mougeotte all came in pretty close to Manaswin for a very solid team score. Inessa Maldonado, Addy Lee, Natalie Holthe, and Joy McBride kept the maroon rolling across the finish line. Our young lady ‘Cats ended up 3rd as a team, just 6 points from being overall winners.
Frosh Boys
Johann Gothold has been one of our top freshmen throughout the early races of the season. At Jessup, Johann made it into the top 10 as the top Wildcat. Maximus Kotte and Davis Little crossed the line 7 spots later in a tie. Tyler Crabtree and Simon Aragoza were our 4th and 5th runners, both finishing in the top 30, and making for a very strong score for Whitney. Nathan Olah, and Keaton McDermott were next, with James Totaro, Christian Clark, and Jack Sponder rounding out the solid frosh soph boys effort. Davis, Tyler, Simon, and James all hit 2-mile PR’s, even though this course was a 2.1-mile course, meaning it was about 150 meters long. And the freshman boys placed 2nd in team scoring.
Soph Boys
The original race schedule had frosh soph boys combined, but the entries list kept growing, so we made the decision to split frosh soph into two races. Top Whitney sophomore Tyler Kubota once again blazed the way as the first Wildcat, finishing 3rd. Showing impressive improvement each week, Connor Rekers came in 12th with a new lifetime 2-mile PR. Also making it into the top 20 was Victor Needham. Jack Regan was 28th, hitting a big PR. Brady Quinn and Max Bowen both crossed the line in the top 50 as Daniel Cho (another runner with a PR) and Aaron Humphries all helped to affect the Whitney scoring. The Wildcats placed 4th in a very tight finish, just 3 points behind 2nd place.
Varsity Girls
At the midpoint of the 2022 XC season, our varsity girls squad is starting to take shape. For the boys, the varsity line-up is usually senior-heavy with some juniors. But girls varsity teams often have younger runners making an impact. Currently only one senior is on the varsity squad, and that’s Katie Kopec who was up in Corvalis for an official NCAA recruiting visit. Junior Ava Kopec led the way for the Lady ‘Cats, splitting the top two St. Francis girls to place 3rd overall. Rising freshman Jane Landon, just a hundred meters behind, finished the race in 6th. Sophomore Shay Waters and junior Grace Scott placed 15th and 16th respectively, making it four maroon jerseys in the top 20. Pushing into the top 30 was the trio of sophomores Alishia Elie and Izzy Soto, and junior Sophie Bowen. And just like that, with still three-quarters of all the runners yet to complete the race, all the Whitney runners were across the line. The result was a 2nd place team effort, just 15 points behind the D2 powerhouse St. Francis team.
Varsity Boys
Having just raced hard at SFL#1 just three days prior, the message to the varsity boys was to be a bit more conservative than usual in the early stages of the 3.2-mile race. The Jessup course was longer than a 5K, with difficult terrain, and no shade on a day that was heating up quickly. And so at the half mile mark, a quick count revealed that our 5-pack was not in the top 30, settling in and relaxed. Looking at the video footage later, Callum and Teo can be seen talking and smiling (maybe they’ll fill us in on that conversation :-)). But by mid-race, the maroon swarm was in full engagement as our guys began to climb past other runners. Consistent #1 runner Mateo DelGadillo cruised to 8th place. And then the strength of this team was fully evident when Nick Herrmann, Noah Lopez, Callum Turner, and David Hurren used their signature teamwork to all finish within 9 seconds of each other. A half minute later, Dario Ruscica and Jaden Rapp crossed the line, and Whitney was all in with still 80% of the runners still racing. It was the fifth consecutive team victory of the season as Whitney’s varsity boys remain undefeated.
JV Girls
With our smallest contingent of the cross country team being upper class girls, we have not yet been able to field a full team for our JV girls races. Only three Whitney runners were on the starting line. Kaylee Holyoak ran extremely well to finish 4th overall. Taylor Bettencourt ran just as well, placing 8th. And first-year senior Annick Friedrich finished in the top 30 as she becomes more and more familiar with distance running and racing. With performances like these three young ladies, a couple more finishers for us would reveal a pretty strong JV squad.
JV Boys
Whitney does have plenty of numbers and depth on the guys’ side of upper class runners. In fact a large number of our JV boys would be scoring varsity runners on probably 90% of the teams in the region. This dynamic was very evident as Whitney went 1-2-3 across the line. Joel Tajiri, Aidan Barkve, and Noah Reed all came in well ahead of all opposing runners. Our next three… Peyton Boyd, Landon Wibbeler, and Brandon Olah were all across in the top 15. Joey Gloria and Brendan Whitmore, training and racing together recently, were next for Whitney, both finishing in the top 40. The depth of this strong squad continued with five more runners. Akanis Surapak, Owen Hinkelman, Tyler Herceg, Carter McBride, and Danial Malji rounded out the strong effort by Whitney’s JV squad, which won by nearly 30 points.
By the day’s end, Whitney had two team victories, two 2nd’s, a 3rd and a 4th. The team continues to progress nicely. As we enter the second half of the season, up next is a section course preview at Willow Hills, which will be our largest meet to date this season.