Ed Sias Invitational - Sat 9/14/02

2002 VARSITY MEET PREVIEW - Meet Announcement

By SPENCER ALLEN

The 18th annual Ed Sias Invitational looks to continue its tradition of providing top caliber competition to kick off the cross country season. The event, which will be contested September 14th at Hidden Valley Park in Martinez, has confirmed entries from over 40 teams. The North Coast Section leads the list with 29 followed by the Central Coast and San Joaquin sections with 4 teams each.

Teams entered; ACALANES, ALBANY, ALHAMBRA, AMADOR VALLEY, ANTIOCH, ATHENIAN, BEAR CREEK, BELLARMINE, BENICIA, BERKELEY, BEYER, CAMPOLINDO, CARONDELET, CHINESE CHRISTIAN, COLLEGE PARK, CONCORD, DE LA SALLE, DEER VALLEY, DEL CAMPO, FAIRFIELD, FREEDOM, GRANADA, GRANITE BAY, IRVINGTON, JAMES LOGAN, LAS LOMAS, LIBERTY, LIVERMORE, MIRAMONTE, MISSION SAN JOSE, MT. SHASTA, NEWARK MEMORIAL, NORTH MONTEREY COUNTY, NORTHGATE, OAKLAND, PIEDMONT, SAN LEANDRO, SAN RAFAEL, SAN RAMON, SILVER CREEK, SKYLINE, ST. FRANCIS, ST. IGNACIUS, ST. JOSEPH'S, ST. MARY'S, STUART HALL, WOODSIDE

Boys Preview

The NCS entries feature 3 consensus top-10 section teams. San Ramon Valley returns 6 of 7 starters from last year lead by juniors Dallin Rosendahl and Scott Bauhs and senior John Martin. De La Salle has the top returning NCS harrier in senior Tom Johnson supported by senior Matt McCallister and junior Kevin Dubrall. Miramonte returns 4 of 7 from last year's NCS D-3 championship team featuring sophomore Andrew Gold and juniors Joel Buscheck and Daryl Zalan. Other strong NCS entries include Livermore, Deer Valley, James Logan, College Park, Acalanes and Campolindo.

What the CCS may lack in terms of numbers they make up for in terms of talent. All 4 boys teams are ranked in the CCS top 10. North Monterey County (#2) is lead by sophomores Kelly Parker and Nathan Huerta along with Junior Eric Padilla. Silver Creek (#3) is lead by junior Daniel Jensen. Bellermine (#4) with seniors Max Wainwright and Nick Arcelona and St. Ignatius (#6) with seniors Joseph Tognetti and Zachary Lapping should be in the hunt for the team title.

Del Campo, ranked #5 in the SJS and #9 in state division 2, features state ranked individual Chris Hart.

Top individuals not mentioned above are lead by Alex Enscoe (Berkeley) and Josef Ghebray (James Logan) as well as Justin Pines (Campolindo), Mitchell Steves (College Park), Adrian Luis (Oakland), Alex Shogun (Acalanes)

Girls Preview

Predicting the top finishers on the girls side is dicey business. On paper the girls team entries look as strong as ever. Campolindo, a perennial powerhouse, is the defending D-3 state champion and ranked #1 this year with Miramonte ranked #9. Granite Bay (#6) and College Park (#8) are rank in the state top 10 for D-2 and Piedmont is ranked #4 in D-4. It is unlikely, however, that most of these teams will run at full strength in the Ed Sias. Several coaches like to let their girls run with their age groups (i.e. frosh-soph rather than varsity) to ease into the season and there is speculation that Caitlin Chock (Granite Bay) and Erica Holland (College Park) will not be present. Depending on how the teams are constructed, look for Piedmont to take the meet, lead by sophomore sisters Jehan and Naomi Sparks. St. Ignatius with super soph Ciara Viehweg, Miramonte lead by NCS D-3 defending champion Jen Saura and Carondelet with Ashleigh Montogomery should be in the hunt for the team title.

Individual honors should be Viehweg's to lose if Chock isn't present. Last week she posted an 18:03 3-mile at the Earlybird Invitational while besting state ranked Melisa Grelli and Casey Nevitt. In pursuit should be the Sparks sisters, Saura, Montgomery, Lindsay Allen (College Park), Katina Hubbard, Mimi Yuhas and Arpil Dyer (Campolindo), Lisa Crampton and Liz Ottenheimer (Granada), and Gabi Rios-Sotelo (St. Mary's).

FOR MORE INFO ON THE ED SIAS INVITATIONAL, PLEASE VISIT THE WEB SITE AT:

http://www.mdusd.k12.ca.us/collegepark/Track

Meet Announcement!!

Dear Coaches,

Wow! We've come a long way! In 1985 College Park was thrilled with the opportunity to host a modest invitational meet for local teams on their, then, relatively new home course. We never imagined it would grow to be so popular! The 2002 meet will feature all the traditional elements we feel have made it a success in the past, including a "grass roots" atmosphere as our parent volunteers cook up the goodies on the park grill, our staff and officials give helpful direction to new athletes, and of-course, the eager masses crowd around the colorful hand-scored result boards just "minutes" after each race (Ha!).

However, this year we may need to make a minor adjustment. Our field for the 2002 event has reached 48 schools. This is far-and-away the most participation we've experienced in our eighteen years of success. With a field of this magnitude, we are concerned that some of the races, particularly the Frosh-Soph and Junior Varsity divisions, may be unmanageable for the 2 mile distance. Therefore, we would like to offer up a possible solution for your consideration.

We want to keep the scoring races intact for the purpose of determining meet champions for each division. In order to keep the fields in these races manageable and safe we would like to LIMIT the number of entries per school in ALL divisions except the Frosh Boys race to 7 runners. In order to accommodate the ADDITIONAL entries over the 7 runner limit that each school may have, we will then add 2 races to the meet schedule -One boys and one girls race. These additional races will NOT be scored. They will be open to both Frosh Soph AND Junior Varsity runners NOT among the respective top 7 for their teams. However, we certainly want to provide these athletes with the competitive opportunity they deserve, and will provide medals for the top 4, and merchandise to the top 10 (or even deeper), just like the other races. And perhaps a positive aspect of this change is that these athletes will have an opportunity to shine in a race comprised of athletes of comparable ability and experience.

So, if this receives a positive response form enough coaches, the adjusted meet schedule for Saturday will look like this:

9:00am Coach's Race Unlimited
9:20 Boy's Frosh UNLIMITED
9:40 Boy's Junior Varsity 7 Runner Limit
10:00 Boy's Frosh Soph 7 Runner Limit
10:20 Boy's Frosh Soph AND Junior Varsity UNLIMITED (new)
10:40 Boy's Varsity 7 Runner Limit
11:00 Girl's Junior Varsity 7 Runner Limit
11:20 Girl's Frosh Soph 7 Runner Limit
11:40 Girl's Frosh Soph AND Junior Varsity UNLIMITED (new)
12:00 Girl's Varsity 7 Runner Limit

Schools must first field a 7 runner team in the "limited" race before they will be permitted to enter athletes into the additional FS and JV UNLIMITED races.

Coaches will designate which athletes will run in what race on RACE DAY. We will simply leave the division portion of your tags blank.

And if all goes well, this will only add about 20 minutes to our original schedule!

Please let us know if this is an acceptable solution. We will do our best to address your concerns. Currently, this appears to be the best solution.

WE WILL NOTIFY YOU OF OUR FINAL DECISION NO LATER THAN WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 11TH AT 8PM.

Sincerely,

Chuck Woolridge
ESI Meet Director

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