Top teams start to rev into faster gear
along "Road To The State Meet!"
Saugus and Carondelet girls dominate their races
while Buchanan boys continue to rise; Hasay and
Schwartz rack up big wins while Crescenta Valley
teams and individuals enjoy superb day on state course!

By Rich Gonzalez
Editor, DyeStatCal
     (FRESNO) -- There were green lights shining brightly for girls' cross-country teams from Saugus and Carondelet and the Buchanan boys crew along the "Road To The State Meet", but all traffic signals were flashing an ominous yellow for Arcadia's boys squad.
     Meanwhile, former FootLocker national champion Jordan Hasay of Mission Prep kicked the dust off her racing shoes and Chris Schwartz of Bakersfield Foothill hopefully kicked a bad racing habit as both prevailed in fine sweepstakes race victories to highlight the individual performers at the 29th Annual Clovis Invitational on Saturday morning at Woodward Park, site of the CIF-State championships in seven weeks.
     Saugus coach Rene Paragas hinted a few weeks prior that his Centurions would begin juggling race-day lineups to from mid-September up until postseason to "keep things fresh" after starting the ultra-long season marvelously with a landslide victory at the Woodbridge Invitational.
     Despite keeping two key regulars out of varsity action (one ran at the lower-levels and the other attended to a mild cold), California Region top-ranked Saugus absolutely dominated one of the non-sweepstakes races, posted the fastest girls all-races team time of the day (92:00, an 18:24 average -- 4th fastest in course history and 39 seconds off the all-time record), and prevailed in a simulated "power merge" of results from the day's best teams.
     "That was nice," said Paragas with an assured smile after being shown the results of a much-larger statistical merge which had CA Region #2-ranked Carondelet prevailing by 3 points in an all-schools varsity-race-only configuration of more than 100 teams. "For two (of our girls) not in the race, we ran well."
     Saugus sophomore Katie Dunn took third (17:52) in a hotly contested individual battle in the Girls Extra-Large Division race, where the Centurions claimed 5 of the first 14 spots to score 39 points, well ahead of an impressive and underclass-dominated Marina lineup that tallied 102 points.
     Less than an hour later, Carondelet of the North Coast Section stormed across the course for a big 40-point win (57-97) over a much deeper race field in the Girls Sweepstakes Race, with powerful Southern Section squads Crescenta Valley, Foothill (140) and Mira Costa (143) snaring the next three team places.
     The hungry Cougars, fresh off an impressive across-state-lines victory at the Nike PreNationals meet in Portland last weekend, were in control here with 4 in the top 16 in the sweepstakes and their final scorer placing 31st as Carondelet rolled to a superb 92:38 team time (15 seconds off the NCS course record and also good for Top 10 all-time). Sophomore sensation Nicole Hood led the charge with a super 17:37 clocking good for third in the featured race. The crew appears well on pace to successfully defend its Division II state title in less than two months. Coach Mary Ann Grubb indicated her crew will skip next weekend's previously scheduled Roughrider Invitational appointment on this very same course and will instead ready for its Southland sojourn to the Mt. SAC Invitational in two weeks.
     Buchanans boys, who fared quite well at both the Woodbridge and Stanford meets earlier this season despite having a key runner sidelined, finally ran with its projected top scoring lineup intact for the first time this season, helping propel it to a 152-185 decision over a fast-rising El Rancho squad running its best race of the season.
     Danny Vartanian, sidelined since August, was Buchanan's fifth scorer here and will very likely improve on that position as his fitness progresses after being benched by a stress fracture. Vartanian's instructions were to go out with a conservative pace in this one and finally find his groove, rather than trying to do too much in his debut race.
     Clearly the best coaching jobs across the state this weekend went to Crescenta Valley's Mark Evans and Oak Park's Kevin Smith. (But the best coaching since the start of the summer goes to Ray Elliott at El Rancho. Check the boys team recap for more details on that).
     Evans saw his boys squad place third in sweepstakes to go along with the runner-up showing in sweeps by the girls program. The Falcons, who have never advanced to state on the boys side, placed fourth overall in the merged varsity boys scores while the girls team took third in the same scoring setup.
     Additionally, Crescenta Valley junior Zack Torres had the state's clear "step-up" performance this week with a clutch fourth-place finish in the boys sweepstakes race, running a big lifetime best on the state meet course and being within 10 seconds of race winner Schwartz.
     Smith and his support staff enjoyed watching as the Eagles won their Division 3 varsity races in very impressive fashion with the boys taking fourth in the overall scoring merge and the girls taking fifth. Clearly, Oak Park is one of the top mid-sized/small-schools programs in America.
     Schwartz enjoyed the best performance of his cross-country career and it unsurprisingly came largely as a result of him abandoning his usual go-out-fast-and-try-to-hang-on approach. Schwartz instead let others "do the work" in the first half of the race before asserting himself, gaining the lead, then scampering to a two-second win over Del Campo's James Tracy, 15:21 to 15:23.
     "I didn't like not being in the lead right from the start," Schwartz admitted. "It felt weird running that way, but I felt much stronger in the end."
     Schwartz, who patterns his usual racing style after former distance legend Steve Prefontaine's wreckless aggression, was asked if -- based on today's outcome -- he might begin altering his racing style.
     "Probably not", he shot back with a smile. "We'll see."
     Mission Prep junior Jordan Hasay, a two-time California state cross-country champion and the FootLocker nationals winner in 2005, had her best true "hard" effort of the season and won by 10 seconds over a determined Claire Collison of Crescenta Valley (yet another Mark Evans protege) in the girls sweepstakes race.
     Hasay's coach, Armando Siqueiros, admitted afterward that both coach and athlete were looking for a slightly fastest time here ("workouts have been outstanding," he said) but that were training phases are geared much later than most of her peers, and thus she's far from being in peak racing shape yet. Siqueiros said Hasay's big goal this year is to focus on the Junior Championships competitions which begin two months AFTER the California state meet.
     Hasay, mobbed by a horde of young autograph seekers as soon as she exited the finish chute, was all smiles and gracious to her supporters while officially getting her higher profile season underway.
     While many of the state's top teams enjoyed another strong outing, perhaps one of the best Southern Section boys squads continued to be the most inconsistent. Arcadia, which notched a great second-place finish in the sweepstakes race at Woodbridge and followed that up with superb showing at Stanford, reverted back to the form which saw it encounter unsatisfying setbacks at the Bosco Tech, Pacific League cluster, and Pepperdine meets. The Apaches received a great showing from its lead trio, but lacked an impressive showing at the depth positions to place 5th as a team, including losses to three teams it had previously beaten.
     The good news for them and anyone else not quite performing as they'd wish up to this point? We're only halfway through the season.
     Still plenty of time to get rollin' on "The Road To The State Meet."

Additional boys and girls recaps still to come!

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