Every spring as we approach championship season, we shift our focus in training to hopefully bring about a collective peak for our distance runners. If we’re going to call ourselves a “May-vember Team”, meaning we rise up when it’s the postseason in May (track) and November (XC), we should see some higher-than-expected performances during Finals. And did we ever see that in 2023!
Here’s a smattering of what our incredible runners accomplished during SFL Championships:
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- There were 78 lifetime PR’s at SFL Championships among our 51 distance runners
- 7 first-time sub-5-minute 1600m times posted in one day (Whitney record) among our boys JV and varsity, adding to the 15 runners who’d already broken 5 minutes, reaching a total of 22, a single season record
- Yet another sub-6-minute 1600m time (Rae Britton) for a Whitney record 11 sub-6 girls in one season
- 5 SFL league champions (Katie 1600, Ava K 800 for 3rd yr in a row, Mateo 800 for 2nd yr in a row, Tyler JV 3200, and Katie again 3200)
- Whitney’s varsity boys and girls distance squads scored 88 points, which is half of the total possible points in the 3 distance events. In other words, Whitney scored as much as the other 5 teams in the SFL combined.
- Whitney advanced 14 distance runners to the Division One Meet, more than any other team in the section, and a Whitney record
- Specific achievements that speak to the strength of Whitney in the 800…
- Whitney won all 4 races of the first-ever 4x800m relay at a league championship
- Nearly 100% of all of our boys who raced the 800 at SFL Trials hit a lifetime PR
- Whitney scored an unbelievable total of 43 varsity points, boys and girls combined 800, out of a possible 62 points, meaning Whitney outscored the rest of the league 43 to 19
- Two defending champions (Ava and Teo)
- Two runner-ups (Addi and Callum)
Whitney has not lost a girls 800 SFL Final in 3 years, thanks to 3-time champion Ava
Whitney has not lost a boys 800 SFL Final since 2018, thanks to Ethan Dodge, Jason Finta, and 2-time defending champion Teo
Let’s continue with a little more detail on the Wednesday Trials session of SFL Championships. There were two featured events for distance runners: 1) the 800m Trials, and 2) the Final of the first ever league competition of the 4x800m Relay.
The 4x800m Relay is an event that has been run at the state meet level in 40 of the 50 states for many years. For some reason, California was not among them. Until this year. In January, the CIF announced the 4x800m Relay would be inserted in the State Championships, and the Sac Joaquin Section would receive two berths for each boys and girls. That’s all we knew, as the CIF left it up to each of the 10 sections to figure out how to determine their section berths. The other sections met right away, agreed, and delivered their guidance early in the season. The Sac Joaquin Section took its time.
So there was a lot of guesswork as to how or whether we would approach a varsity boys and girls 4×800 relay team. It was finally determined that 8 of the 6 teams in our league would automatically advance (yep, you heard that math correctly… “8 of 6”). In other words, everyone advances, up to 8 in a league of 6 teams. The only requirement was that we actually had to run it. Oh, and it would not be a scored event.
This all added up to one conclusion: This would be the easiest qualifier in history, we just at least need to jog the baton around. In the spirit of competition, we weren’t going to mock our sport by jogging it, but we did take the pressure off our runners by opening it up to any 4 boys and 4 girls who wanted to volunteer to get the baton around. Our varsity boys were Landon Wibbeler, Peyton Boyd, Joey Gloria, and Perry Hutchinson, none of whom intended to be on the eventual relay squad, but nonetheless said they’d have fun racing the relay at league finals.
Meanwhile, our top frosh 800m runners (Davis Little, Johann Gothold, Simon Aragoza, Nathan Olah) were all set to go for it on the JV side. When race day came, there was no other JV squad but Whitney. And for varsity, only a couple other teams. This resulted in race officials combining the varsity and JV, which unexpectedly produced one of the most magical moments of the league championship… a neck-and-neck showdown between our top frosh runners, and a group of upper class runners who were hopping in to have some fun. Side by side each leg of the relay went, with the other schools’ varsity squads not keeping up, it ended up being an exciting two-team race of maroon vs. maroon, and eventually a narrow victory by our volunteer varsity boys, followed closely by our freshman team. Whitney went 1-2!
Our varsity girls ended up being our actual line-up that we would designate for the postseason (Izzy Soto, Grace Scott, Addi Ewers, Ava Kopec). And our JV girls, like the boys, had no other teams to compete with, so they combined with the varsity race, which had Whitney and only two other teams. Our varsity girls weren’t racing, but not exactly jogging either, so they won comfortably, and our JV girls crossed in 2nd overall (Sophia Lopez, Inessa Maldonado, Addy Lee, Rae Britton) behind our varsity, so 1st place for JV. And a 1-2 Whitney finish.
For both inaugural SFL 4×800 Relay races, Whitney went into the record books 1-2 each time, and a total of four league crowns.
Those two relays were enough fun and excitement for one meet, but the other task at hand was loading up most of our distance runners in the individual 800m Trials. For a few of our runners, the 800 was their preferred event, so the task was more purposeful: place in the top 12 overall to advance to Friday’s Finals. For everyone else, it was an anaerobic blast to have one final shot at a PR, or just get a little speed work trying. How did the 800m Trials end up? As mentioned earlier, we got to see a ton of PR’s. And in a couple of cases, a PR at Trials was followed by yet another lifetime PR at Finals. The biggest example of this would be the incredible 1-2 varsity boys finish of Mateo DelGadillo and Callum Turner, both breaking 1:57, and each coming within a few tenths of the school record.
800m PR at SFL Championships
Our incredible boys’ effort in the SFL 800 deserves a closer look. This list shows our entire boys’ squad, including each runner who PR’d during SFL Championships, and by how much of a margin: