This week’s Sac-Joaquin Section Team of the Week is St. Francis High School. St. Francis – the all-girls school adjacent to CSU-Sacramento – is steeped in athletic tradition. The school happens to be especially strong in soccer (working on a streak of four straight section titles), golf (six-time NorCal champions), and volleyball (defending state champions), but the cross country team has chipped in with seven section titles of their own. A banner sports year for the school in 2005-06 (which earned section titles in cross country, water polo, volleyball, tennis, and soccer) gave the Troubadours a total of 49 team titles since 1943, more than any girls program in the section. Davis is a very close second with 48.

      While the school has just undergone a sparkling renovation, that renovation also happened to include some expansion, which has pushed St. Francis into Division 2. So long-standing rivalries with Placer and Del Oro in Division 3 will soon be replaced with playoff battles against Oak Ridge, Vacaville, Ponderosa, and the like. Each division currently has three berths to the CIF state meet.

       The Troubadours are currently on a run of eight consecutive state meet appearances, the longest consecutive girls’ streak in the SJS. The program reached its zenith with a state title at the 2002 Fresno meet, finishing 18 points ahead of Campolindo. In 2004, the school did the improbable by qualifying for the state meet – and finishing among the Top 50 ‘team times’ – with five freshmen in the Top 7. The Troubadours were 15th in Division 3 that year. Last year the Troubadours progressed to seventh statewide in D3.

      Not only is cross country here in California immensely fortunate to have a system to decide statewide team and individual champions as well as organizations like Nike and FootLocker to help decide – at their own expense – champions at the national level, but it’s one of the few sports that recognizes the best teams in three different categories at the section level: Junior Varsity, Frosh/Soph, as well as Varsity. St. Francis takes full advantage of this opportunity. With right around 50 runners on the team in most years (over 60 in 2006), being on the varsity top seven may be an unrealistic goal for many. But having an impact – and being with any group of girls that can be section champions (no matter how fast you are yourself) – is always pushed and promoted by the coaches. As everyone who has ever made a hit on a DyeStat page knows, there’s something about running for someone else instead of just yourself that makes each subsequent footstep just a little bit more bearable.

      Head coach John Ducray began coaching running in 1971 and has been the school’s first and only cross country coach since the team started in 1981. Interestingly enough, John’s prep background had little to do with running. He was a three-sport star at Sacramento High and played baseball alongside Jerry Royster (Atlanta Braves) and against Fernando Arroyo (Detroit Tigers) and Rowland Office (Braves/Expos). John was All-City in football and also played basketball. But it was his decision to play baseball instead of track in the spring which would have an effect on the rest of his coaching career.

      As an 8th grader John had long jumped 19’7” and ran a 1:23 600 meters, so he had an talent and appreciation for athletics. Partly because, “I may have missed my calling” in track and field and partly because he loves the challenge of getting teenage girls to understand that it’s OK to have success in athletics just like the boys, John made the decision to coach girls’ running and 35 years later, he’s still at it.

      Within the last six years, John has been joined by Tom Laythe and Megan Quirk on the staff. Tom began running in Salem, OR in 1968 posting respectable high school times of 4:21 and 9:32 in the distance events. He ran at Oregon State and also Boise State and later with the Aggie Running Club. Megan ran cross country at St. Francis in the ‘90’s and is a key part of the summer training program.

      Following a long run along the north bank of the American River on a warm summer evening, we spoke with three of the runners who hope to have a big impact this fall: senior Diva Winje, junior Maggie Lloyd, and sophomore Nicole Mendoza. Mendoza was 2nd in the Delta League and 4th at the section meet in D3. She was the number one runner at the state meet for St. Francis (19:07) - which is the 2nd fastest Troubadour state meet time in the last seven years. Lloyd had some injuries in 2005 but was fourth on the varsity in several meets as a freshman in 2004 including section finals, Delta League finals, and the Placer Invitational and was 6th overall in the Stanford JV race. Winje was the #6 runner for St Francis last year although she scored at the state meet by taking fifth on the team with a 20:08.

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DyeStatCal: St. Francis has had a long streak of state meet appearances and four section titles in that span. Does that make your approach to this year any different in terms of keeping that streak alive or are you just taking things as they come heading into the season?

Diva: John makes sure that we’re all determined enough to run and he puts the varsity team out there so that everyone wants to get up to that team. Everyone tries their hardest, even during the summer, and that’s how we all become good. But John also regulates it so that we don’t all go out too fast and kill ourselves. He’s very experienced.

Maggie: It’s always exciting how not every team is exactly the same. Every year there’s no way you can have the same successes. There’s always new freshman coming in and you never know who’s going to come on your team. It’s exciting and suspenseful like “Oh, what’s the team going to be like this year?” so you never really know. But I can tell just by looking right now by how excited everyone is and how eager everyone is to work hard to go distances that we’ve never gone before, that it’s going to be a good season.

Nicole: There’s a lot of “One Team, One Goal” going on. Everybody’s on the same page. Even if you’re on frosh/soph, or on JV, or on varsity, we’re all still one team and we all have one goal.

DyeStatCal: There’s going to be a battle for the top seven this year. It’s a very deep team. Have you started to sense that yet.

Nicole: Yeah. Everybody’s training their best because when it comes down to it there will only be seven on the varsity team. But I think no matter who goes varsity, it’s going to be a great team.

Diva: Well, I’ve been injured and I’m slowly but surely getting myself back up there. I can definitely sense it. Every year I always seem to have this ego of like, “Oh top seven, no big deal” and it always proves me wrong because I always have to fight for it. But this year I’m kinda coming from the underdog role, because I haven’t had as much training. It’s going to be competitive, but it’s going to make the team a whole lot better. I think everyone’s going to do their best to beat everyone else and what’s wrong with fun competition?

Maggie: With our sheer volume of runners competing for the top seven, I can sense it. I know because it’s always on my mind. I’m looking around, like “Who’s doing what? Where is everyone?” But it’s also fun. You can say “Oh, I got to run with this person today.”

DyeStatCal: Let’s do a little survey. What’s your favorite course?

Diva: I really, really like Mt SAC. I know a lot of people don’t like that race but I like that for every uphill there’s a downhill and it’s very consistent and I can talk myself through the race. And it’s a fun race too. (Note: St. Francis was 4th at Mt. SAC in 2005 behind Corona Del Mar, Campolindo, and Bonita).

Maggie: Actually I don’t want to say what my favorite race is because I don’t want to jinx it. Well, I remember the Bronco meet last year. It was at Folsom (Willow Hill course). It changes a little bit; it changes like every week. You get so sick of running the same course, but it changes.

Nicole: I’d have to say Mt SAC too because it’s a really challenging course. And because there’s something about traveling to the course that makes it more fun.

Diva: It really miss Sierra College though. That was my favorite course.

Maggie: I remember too, I like the Yolo course. (Diva strongly disagrees). I had so much fun in that race.

DyeStatCal: St Francis moves from Division 3 to Division 2 this year. Give me a “That’s good”, “That’s bad”, or an “I don’t care”.

Diva: I think it’s good because it’ll give us different teams to compete against.

Nicole: Don’t care.

Maggie: Don’t care. We’re still St. Francis.

DyeStatCal: St Francis cross country is a little more than just a team. John tries to make it family and a cohesive group effort. Do you have any comments on what last year was like and how being on the team changes you and prepares you for life in general?

Diva: I completely agree with that. Our whole philosophy is “one team one goal”. I always feel I’m a part of something when I’m on this team. Cross country and track are different because track is more for yourself. With cross country, you always feel you owe it to your teammates to do a good job. And I also agree that it does help you later in life because it does help you cooperate with other people, and the teamwork.

Nicole: (Last year) I really felt welcomed when I came to the team and it made me love cross country that much more being on this team - even more than other sports.

After practice one evening, we had a long chat - over pepperoni pizza (and some beverages) - with Coach Ducray and Coach Laythe about their anticipation of another exciting season with St. Francis.

DyeStatCal: Coach John, tell us some of the ways your coaching philosophy has stayed the same and maybe the most significant way it’s changed in the last 20-30 years.

Coach Ducray: Our philosophy is to run a very good program but to make sure the girls have fun and success no matter if they’re first or last. I love to get the parents involved, as you know. I’ve there for 28-29 years… because the boys, they want to have and they want to go get it, and they want to strut their stuff, so to speak. With the girls it’s different. They just want to come out and have fun and be social and so it’s fun to get them to be competitive.

DyeStatCal: Which is sometimes against their natural tendencies.

Coach Ducray: Exactly, but it’s fun to get them to be competitive. But with Coach Tom’s help – and of course we have Coach Megan – we’re trying to keep the social stuff in there because if we just tried to run the program to be number one or be the best, the girls would run away from the sport. It’s fun to take girls as freshman, and to bring them along and try to find that competitive spirit under the concept of being a family and a team.

DyeStatCal: But we also want to know in what way you’ve changed.

Coach Ducray: Believe it or not, I am calmer (hearty laugh). I did ten years of football coaching and twenty years of basketball and I’ve loved it. So when you coach boys in football, you get to be more intense. They can take it. But I’ve always coached girls along the way. So I’ve learned to mellow out and still keep the standards high.

DyeStatCal: We’re interested in finding out over the last 29 years, which was the most special team to you and maybe the most special runner, or more than one if that’s the case.

Coach Ducray: It’s hard to say. 2002 was a special team because they won the state championship. That was a special team that came together. And we only had five girls and they all had to stay healthy. (Numbers) six and seven were good but if we would have lost one of the five we wouldn’t have done what we did. Tom and I kept them together. A couple years ago our two top runners got anemic (Mairin Meltvedt and Megan Alexander) and we still took second in the section. We were only sixth at subsections so we went from sixth to second in the section so I think that was one of our better coaching jobs to keep going to state.

Prior to that, I have to go back – I had a great team in ’84-’85: Mary Claire Robinson (now head women’s soccer coach at UC Davis), Julie Verke who set a record at American River College (17:21 5k), Nicole Lange (Walt Lange’s daughter), the twins Marie and Margaret Brothers, sisters of Kelly Brothers, the KFBK newscaster. And that team took second in the section out of nowhere. We were seeded sixth or seventh and upset Del Campo. That’s when all the teams ran together, there were no divisions. We took second, went to Northern California, and took 10th in all of Northern California. That’s a fond memory. That was before the state meet because the state meet came in ’87.

We kind of “plateau-ed” for a couple years and then we had Kolleen Kassis – now our Athletic Director Kolleen McNamee. She started the rebirth of St. Francis in 1987. Ann Kuphaldt (of Bella Vista) was the two-time defending section champion of all the divisions again and Koko as a freshman ran 18:29 at Sierra College and upset Ann. Just ran away from her. We took the individual first, but the team wasn’t that good yet. But she started to put us on the map. And by 1989-90-91 we had won three section titles in a row. There were some good runners like Cybelle McFadden who won two section titles and was very good in track as well – went to state meet a couple years in a row. We had some good kids and Koko was in that group as well. Chloe Jarvis ran all four years and we finally won a section title with Chloe her senior year in 1998.

Let me add to this: I think we have overall – including frosh/soph and JV – no other team in the whole section has as many section championships as we have. We have more JV championships than varsity – it’s either nine or ten. And for frosh/sophs, we are up to five or six. We just don’t have a varsity level program that’s very good - we have a JV a frosh/soph program, and as you know, we push that. We’re not just a one-dimensional team. We are three-dimensional and we include everybody. The frosh/soph and JV are just as important as our varsity team.

DyeStatCal: I think something people are going to be interested in is for you tell us a little bit about your 2006 varsity team.

Coach John: I want Coach Tom to add to this but I might take most of the thunder here. We’re going to be deep for sure. We have – Coach Tom and I have been talking about this already all summer – we have 11-12 girls fighting it out for 7 spots. That’s serious contenders. At least 10-11. And there’s at least two or three others on the outside, if they get going in the next month or two we could have as many as 12 or 13 serious girls.

We’ll have a JV team - most of those girls on the JV team could be on the top five runners of most other varsity teams, no worse than top seven, with the exception of that Davis team. We could run like that 2002 team if we get 2-3 girls to step up. I don’t want to mention names, but we’re asking two or three other girls to step up who are juniors or seniors this year. We have a couple really good freshman and a couple other juniors and seniors who’ve been close before who’ve had good summers and that’s why we’re 11 deep.

Coach Laythe: This has been by far the best summer we’ve had in terms of the numbers, the quality, and the consistency. What that does is it raises the bar so we can start out at a higher level. We’ve traditionally been just OK at the start of the season and then we come on and run our best races (later). We still expect to run our best races at the end of the year. The nice thing about being deep is that we still want to keep the girls healthy, but if one goes down, we’ve got a bunch. It’s very conceivable that we could have seven girls under 20:00 (at Woodward Park), we could have seven under 19:30.

DyeStatCal: Speaking of the varsity, with a team this deep, do you change your training philosophy and push them harder than you normally would because you know you have the numbers.

Coach Laythe: I think I’m speaking for John, we’re still going to stay the course. Normally we can start at ‘this’ level, but now we can just start at ‘this’ level. We’re still going to emphasize certain things now and come October we’re going to emphasize certain things. It might change our timing as to when we can start particular phases. So yeah, we are at a higher level, but we are going to stay the course.

Coach Ducray: Let me add to what Tom said. We are able to raise the bar because the girls are now older. They’ve gone from freshman to sophomores to juniors. We’re very, very careful to not pull the trigger too soon. Two years ago we had five freshman make the varsity and last year there were four sophomores on the varsity but we didn’t pull the trigger and have them run a lotta hard mega, mega miles. But now that they’re upperclassmen and they’ve run two track seasons as well as two cross country seasons, we can raise the bar but still stay the course.

What we mean by that, Tom and I for the last three or four years - and you’ve been with us so you know – we have a system. We like what Jim Hunt advocates. We like what Jack Daniels advocates, the great coach out of New York and Stanford (Farm Team). We take the philosophies that we like and set it up for high school girls. We take it and modify it. But now that we have girls that have been in the program for 2-3 years, now we can raise the bar, do a little bit more, add a few things – sooner – and keep ‘em healthy.

As much as we’d like to come out, to be honest, at Granite Bay and kick everybody’s tail, well, we don’t want to do that. We have two ‘seasons’, and you know this. We’re still going to do the preparation for league, subs, sections, and state. And then there is league, subs, sections, and state. We’re not going to change it to be good at the end of September because we don’t care. We want to go to Stanford and run well. We want to run well just because we’re that good at that point staying the course. The next two or three years are going to be exciting.

Coach Laythe: In 2002 we stayed the course. Even though we had some early season successes which we were kind of surprised by – and we thought the team was going to be good – we had to be patient, and it turned out well.

DyeStatCal: What do you want for these girls after high school?

Coach Laythe: Hopefully that it’s a lifelong experience, that they want to run in college, that they want to run after college, and that they like doing this.

Coach Ducray: We want to have a very good program but we do not want to have the type of program that it ends in high school. We want them to go to college and the college program gives them more. We want to have a good program that competes at the state level but leave something over that the colleges can take to another level. We’ve had Chloe Jarvis who has come close to making an Olympic team. It’s a fine balance that we don’t burn them out.