Inland Empire Championships
Saturday, October 7, 2006 @ Guasti Regional
Park (SS) - 3 miles
Doug Soles, the head coach at third-year
school Great Oak, accepts our invitation to hold
up a snapped chain, which we thought was symbolic as the team snapped
Murrieta Valley's
four-year stranglehold on the Inland Empire Championship. The post-race
stats analysis
revealed it and Soles confirmed it: this was clearly their best team
race of the year!
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interviews from the Inland Empire Championships! |
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Ryan Gamboa
Boys Champion |
Mike Wilson
Upland coach |
Will Jacobsmeyer
La Sierra coach |
Doug Soles
Great Oak coach |
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Inland Empire's best pulls rank on the skeptics
By
Rich Gonzalez
Editor, DyeStatCal.com
RANCHO
CUCAMONGA -- The comments came from all areas. From within
the Inland Empire. From down in the Orange County sector. From the greater
Los Angeles area.
The comments came in all forms.
They arrived via email. In phone calls. During chance public meetings.
At invitationals.
The comments were the same, albeit
aimed at two different targets.
"Upland's boys are good...
but not THAT good." "Great Oak's girls are over-rated."
"Upland isn't as good as you think." "We beat Great
Oak (by team time). We're better than them and we are not ranked."
Runners from Upland and Great Oak
responded to their critics with their mouths sealed shut on Saturday
morning.
But their feet spoke so loudly,
their critics could no longer be heard.
Upland, in executing the strongest
midseason (pre-Mt. SAC) Inland Empire team performance this decade,
destroyed the team-time meet record with a resounding 38-point victory
margin in the featured boys race at the annual Inland Empire Championships
at Guasti Regional Park. Race winner Ryan Gamboa led off the Highlanders'
54-second scoring gap (an impressive statistic given Gamboa's standing
among the West Coast's better talents), with all Upland runners finishing
in the Top 20 among a 107-runner field that showcased nearly all of
the area's premier talent.
Great Oak, the third-year program
catching rankings attention as it ascends through enrollment classifications
each fall, was simply magnificent in continuing its improvement curve
with a thrilling upset win on the girls' side. Up front, it was junior
Jessica Barnard's third-place finish which ignited the team's scoring
tally. But on the back end, vastly improved freshman Samantha Morabe
closed out the scoring as the team's fifth runner, with her recent development
being the final key in the squad's 13-point triumph.
And how about La Sierra's boys?
A team that several criticized on message boards in the late summer
as being nothing more than a roster of two fast frontrunners, blasted
for supposedly lacking depth. All they did was finish second to Upland
while recording the second-fastest team time in meet history. Even more
telling, their team-time gap checked in at 87 seconds, seemingly large
to some for a top team by some accounts, but not when the team has TWO
all-region caliber talents heading the way.
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BOYS ALL-TIME
INLAND EMPIRE MEET FASTEST
TEAM TIMES
2006 Upland
76:15.2
2006 La Sierra 77:04.3
2005 Murrieta Valley 77:12.2
2003 Don Lugo 77:40.2
2004 Don Lugo 77:46.0
2005 Upland 77:55.2
2002 Murrieta Valley 77: 56.3
2006 Vista Murrieta 78:07.6 |
Or how about Vista
Murrieta? Another boys team being the target of emails and grapevine
chatter as supposedly not being as good as advertised once they debuted
in the CIF-Southern Section rankings. The proud Broncos once again vanquished
their rivals amid tough and tight challenges here, placing third in
the featured boys race in a showing likely to regain a seat at the table
of ranked CIF-SS Division I teams.
Or Redlands, a girls team that
even we (DyeStatCal) did not think was quite yet at Top 10 level in
Division I. Well, we're glad to say Redlands proved us to be wrong.
The Terriers joined Great Oak in upsetting a fine Murrieta Valley program
persevering through a challenging stage at this point.
Yes indeed. All in all it was a
blockbuster day for the Inland Empire, where continued housing development
and the sprouting up of new schools has helped make the running region
here more and more fertile as the pages flip on the calendar. Every
weekend, the competition gets a little tougher.
"We know that every single
time we've got to go against Murrieta Valley, it's going to be a race.
Redlands is going to be tough," said Great Oak coach Doug Soles,
describing the talent pool his teams must face each weekend as it tries
to develop, all the while gaining respect respect from out-of-area teams.
"I think one of the tough things about being a third-year school,
a second-year school or a first-year school is juist getting your name
out there.
"I would say the most
important thing that people need to do is start to look at Vista Murrieta,
Murrieta Valley and Great Oak as teams that are going to continue to
move up. To me, there's a bit of an Orange County bias. They've got
great programs out there. Sometimes they forget to look to the Inland
Empire and say "You know, there's some good programs out there
(too)."
And the notion that some observers
and opposing coaches have made about Great Oak being over-ranked?
"Anybody that thinks we're
over-ranked is more than welcomed to race us," said Soles, who
admitted he was a little surprised by the victory today, figuring second
or third place might be more realistic.
But that was before everything
began falling into place.
Barnard was in 8th late in the
race but outkicked her counterparts to gain five places. Abbey Gallagher,
nursing the lingering effects of a hip injury, came forward to be the
team's second scorer, and Morabe, who ran 19:38 on the flat and very
fast Dana Hills Invitational course last weekend, improved to run 19:18
on the relatively flat 3-miler here.
"Samantha Morabe really stepped
up for us today," beamed Soles, who pointed at Morabe at the end
of the finish chute and praised her for her efforts. "She went
from #15 for us earlier in the year to #5 today and really has closed
the gap. We've had a lot of girls go down and others have stepped up."
Photo by Rich Gonzalez
From left to right, girls team champion
Great Oak, runner-up Redlands and third-place Murrieta Valley.
Redlands, which
has been making plenty of noise on the large schools scene in recent
years, continued its success with a fine second-place finish with 96
points, easily outdistancing Murrieta Valley's 112. The most impressive
aspect of Redlands performance was its swarm-like attack as all five
scorers finished within 13 places and only 11 seconds from each other!
Murrieta Valley, which has had
a roster shakeup here and there in recent months, continued to persevere,
battling hard to score 112 points, taking solace in the fact that its
5th scorer (32nd in the race) was the second-fastest anchor runner in
the race. That depth and continued progress from frontrunners Taryn
Pastoor and sophomore Anna Schwab could set a solid foundation down
the stretch.
Ashley Evans (#602) in mid-race action
against Hemet's Kendra Mueller.
Individually, it
was sophomore standout Ashley Evans that continued to prosper at Corona,
holding off a mid-race hallenge from Hemet's Kendra Mueller and strong
closes from Rim of the World's Shawna Peterson and Great Oak's Barnard
to win in 17:56 -- a solid 14 second margin of victory!
The boys sweepstakes race team
outcome went exactly as scripted for the top 10 places, although the
up-front individual battle occurring between Gamboa and the Knight Twins
was a situation in flux. Dylan Knight went against his norm in setting
a strong early pace up front, with his twin and Gamboa giving chase.
The duo eventually caught Dylan near two miles, then made their own
moves.
"Dylan ran an interesting
race for us (in that) he took the lead, which he doesn;t normally do,"
said La Sierra coach Will Jacobsmeyer. "Then Gamboa got away and
(Dylan) couldn't run him back down. He said he wanted to (take the lead
early) today and then Spencer made a surge at the two-mile mark which
he said hurt him in the long run."
Photo by Rich Gonzalez
Upland's Ryan Gamboa, La Sierra twins
Spencer and Dylan Knight and Vista Murrieta's David McDonald (l-to-r)
were the top four finishers in the Boys Sweepstakes Race, with Gamboa
and Spencer breaking the course record.
For Gamboa,
who expressed a desire to time his peak better this season, his patient
racing strategy here paid off, wheeling his way through the pedestrian
path circumfering the lake in the race's closing stages, then then
dashing left and into the finishing straight to the chute. Spencer
Knight closed the gap right to the finish before settling for second.
Both Gamboa's winning 14:44 clocking and Spencer Knight's 14:45 runner-up
time bettered the previous meet record set by Don Lugo's Fitsum Tesfa
(14:46 in 2004).
Dylan Knight was
the lone remaining runner to finish under 15 minutes, taking third
in 14:52. Previously unheralded junior David McDonald of Vista Murrieta
was the first non-senior across the line, fourth overall in 15:06,
nine seconds ahead of fellow junior and Southwestern League rival
David McCutcheon of Murrieta Valley (#2 junior in 15:15)
"Every year I always
get beat by one of them in the last 100 yards," shared Gamboa,
At about two miles I decided to break away and hope to keep that lead."
Although the battle for individual
honors had been decided, the war for team bragging rights was still
hotly underway! Upland #2 man Albert Davila came up huge for the team,
allowing just two scorers from other schools to finish between he
and Dylan Knight. The real key, however, was playing out a few seconds
behind them.
Upland #3 man Travis Fernandes,
who endured a rough outing at last weekend's Stanford Invitational,
was money in the bank this time out in his best race of the year,
edging out highly improved La Sierra #3 Steven Norton by a mere second,
15:18-15:19. Through three scorers now in the finish chute for each
school, it was La Sierra clinging to a slim 15-16 lead.
"I was actually pretty happy
with the way we ran," added Jacobsmeyer. "Our #5 guy was
a little back from where he should have been. Our top four guys ran
outstanding." (La Sierra also had a key runner returning from
injury who placed second in the frosh-soph race earlier in the day).
But in this sport, depth is key...
and no one came close to Upland's depth on this day. The team's #4
scorer was sophomore John Guzman (15:24), who was a full 20 seconds
faster than all #4 counterparts and 30 seconds ahead of La Sierra
#4 Mike Mahoney.
Upland's dominance against the
field was greatest at the #5 position, however, as sophomore Nick
Johnson (15:38) was 18 places ahead of Murrieta Valley's 5th, 20 ahead
of Vista Murrieta's 5th, and 22 ahead of La Sierra's 5th. As the fastest
5th placer of the meet while a part of the winning team, Johnson is
thusly identified as the meet's "Golden Anchor"
scorer.
"They were REALLY
GOOD today," said Jacobsmeyer when asked about Upland. "That
was an outstanding performance. They went out very aggressively and
just maintained it, held onto it the whole way."
From left to right, boys team champion
Upland, runner-up La Sierra and 3rd place Vista Murrieta.
The timing
couldn't have been better for Upland, which opened the season well
at the Bosco Tech Invitational in Week One, found itself out of sync
in the big Woodbridge Invitational blockbuster in Week Two, then found
itself worked over by a loaded field at the Stanford Invitational
last weekend.
"We think we're turning
the corner on the season, on the quality work," said Highlanders
coach Mike Wilson when asked to assess his team's strong showing.
We've put in our base and we're going to stick to the plan, which
is to be happy and healthy in November hopefully."
What did Wilson tell team
members during the rough two-week stretch?
"Keep the faith,"
quipped Wilson. "I'm very proud of our guys. They're a strong
family. They're working with some young guys... the older guys get
a chance to mentor."
And the big plus resulting
from Fernandes' clutch run?
"That's what you expect
out of veteran athletes, to weather the tough storms," Wilson
philosophized. "Not too many peaks and valleys. Weather the tough
storms and be ready on the big race days."
Asked to comment about
Gamboa's sensational senior season thus far, Wilson was brief when
speaking about the fine all-around athlete, who has enjoyed ample
succes over the years in using his feet in another sport: "It's
amazing what'll happen when you quit playing soccer."
Among the All-Riverside County performers
Spencer and Dylan Knight of La Sierra,
David McDonald of Vista Murrieta, David McCutcheon of Murrieta Valley,
Raul Arcos of Corona and Steven Norton of La Sierra. Riverside County
took six of the top 10 boys spots to beat the All-San Bernardino County
team.
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