Amador Valley High School Cross Country

11/11/2024

It might mean more if this page was more active, but I still want to say thank you to all of the veterans associated with Amador Valley Cross Country either as alumni, parents of alumni, or parents of current athletes. I especially want to recognize the alumni of our team who I am aware of that served in the United States armed forces:

Ben Hall
Sam Aceret
Ryan Faraudo
Kim Harden
Donnie Brown
Jason Minnig
Graham Hawkinson
Dave O’Neill
D. Michael Wassom
Mike Scott (RIP)
Sebastian Gil
Samantha Miller

Thank you for your service to the United States. As always, if anyone is aware of any alumni who currently serve or who have served, if you send me their name, I will include them on this list.

11/10/2023

I haven't posted about our season at all this year, but will try to get to it after NCS next weekend. A week out from that race, it looks like our boys have a strong chance to qualify for the state meet and the girls have a good chance at a top 5 finish at NCS with a couple of runners in line to compete for individual spots. Today, I want to send out a thank you to all of our Veterans.

I want to send out an article in observance of Veteran’s Day that was sent to me a few months back. Over the years, a number of Amador Valley Cross Country alumni have served in the armed forces. I’m sure I am unaware of the majority of those individuals, but you will find a list of those who I know at the bottom of this post. This article is not intended to overshadow any of those individuals, but instead to give an opportunity to share some of my reflections over a man from Amador Valley High School who lost his life in the Viet Nam war, who has also given me a different perspective on the 1960's at Amador Valley High School.
Back in September, Amador Valley celebrated its Centenniel.

For that purpose and nothing to do with Veteran's Day, an Amador Valley Track and Field alum, Eddie Howell, (class of 1967) sent me a bunch of old Amadons that included information about the track team at the time. One of the artifacts that he sent was an article about a former football player/shot putter, Ron Beardsley. I knew the name.

Those of you who have run track for us since 2008, know that we keep a top 10 list for all of the events. When I first started coaching, we didn’t have that. We knew the records, but had no info on #2-10. It was either that an athlete was #1, or they were forgotten over time. We had a lot of student-athletes who were running pretty well, but not well enough to break the records. Coach Scarpelli and I thought it would be a useful motivator to have a deeper list in order to show the athletes that although they weren’t first, they were historically good in the program. So in the summer of 2008, I spent a couple of weeks (not every day) visiting the Livermore public library looking up pre-internet results from Amador Valley Track and Field. The newspapers were not perfect and I’m sure I missed a result here and there, but they had newspapers for every day back to the mid-60’s. In fact, that is how I eventually heard from Eddie Howell. He contacted me a few years after the I compiled the top 10 lists to tell me that he should be included on the long jump list for a mark he achieved in 1967. He was correct. He has since moved down and off the list, but even now, his mark of 20 feet, 11 inches is #11 all-time. Because I ran out of information though, I kind of gave up on anything that came before the early ’60’s and even those last few years that I could find results were pretty spotty. I think the list has been an effective motivator though because if you look at the number of top marks that have been attained since 2008, it is almost as many marks as were there for the 45 years of results I could find that came before then. It is also how I came into contact with Mr. Howell and how I heard of Mr. Beardsley.

Although I couldn’t find many results that preceded the early ’60’s, I was able to run into a result for Mr. Beardsley in the shot put. I always kind of hated that result because I only found one and it only included his last name. The result was part of a top marks list for the area and didn’t even have a meet associated with it. So our top 10 list in the shot put had the name “Beardsley” his result, the year (1965) and blank spaces where all the other information would be. I just didn’t know any of the other stuff. I always wondered if it was a legit mark or a misprint (because over the years, we did learn that a couple of the marks were misprinted and had to make amendments) and if Mr. Beardsley was even a real Amador Valley person. Of course, I should have gone to the library to check old yearbooks, but I never even thought of that. Anyway, our throwers have been so good lately that he was eventually pushed off the top 10 list and I never really thought about him after that. That is, until Eddie Howell sent me this article about him, his former teammate and a real Amador Valley alum.

The article was a short one written in 1969, from a local paper (I don’t know which paper it is from) about how Ron Beardsley, Amador Valley class of 1965, had been killed in Viet Nam, at the age of 21. He was from a military family (his dad was in the air force) and had an older brother and younger sister (aged 24 and 17 at the time, but now I'm giving away the contents of the article).
Personally, I have had family members in the military (among others, both of my grandfathers fought in World War 2) and like Ron Beardsley, they were young when they went. But both came back. This particular story gave me perspective as there were a couple of other articles that referenced Viet Nam. I don't know why, but I pictured the lunchtime on the quad at a moment where news like this would reach campus. Mr. Beardsley was 21. The seniors on campus were freshmen when he graduated. They may not have known him well, but there were people at school who knew him. They definitely knew of him as he was a good football player and track and field athlete. And plenty of people in that war passed away before the age of 21.

It is not hard to picture students graduating from Amador Valley and joining the military. That happens every year. It is less real to me to think about those students not coming back from their service and the multitude of people who died before all of their teammates had graduated. In my lifetime, that has not been as much of a risk as it has been at other times in our history. But everyone who enlists, does so knowing that a time like that could be real again.

I want to share that short article with you and send thanks to all of our veteran alumni as well as the veterans in your families for the service that they have provided or are still providing. If anyone knows any other Amador Valley service men or women, please let me know so that I can update my lists.
Link: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1cvFryyDLLvpAaKXlrJF7RHmn-FRf11ZE/view?usp=sharing

Coach Ozzie

AVHS Cross Country Service Men and Women
Ben Hall
Sam Aceret
Ryan Faraudo
Kim Harden
Donnie Brown
Jason Minnig
Graham Hawkinson
Dave O’Neill
D. Michael Wassom
Mike Scott (RIP)
Sebastian Gil
Samantha Miller

04/02/2023

Update: Good news! Sol has been found. He is currently safe and not on the area. Thank you for everyone's concern. There is no reason to keep searching.

Some concerning news about Amador Valley alum Sol Sullins. I know that some of you have already heard, but he is currently missing. I communicated with his mother yesterday and she thought there was a possibility that he might have gone into some of the old trails that he used to run on. I guess he spoke about liking those trails. The problem is that we don't know which trails he was referring to. The family is understandably looking for any leads they can find. If you know Sol and know of where he might have gone, please provide that information either to the Pleasanton police, to his family, or to myself. Please keep Sol in your thoughts and join me in hoping for his safe return home.

11/11/2022

A heart felt thank you to all veterans today, especially those associated with Amador Valley Cross Country. Over the years several athletes who I know of have served in the armed forces and I want to recognize them here:

Ben Hall
Sam Aceret
Ryan Faraudo
Kim Harden
Donnie Brown
Jason Minnig
Graham Hawkinson
Dave O’Neill
D. Michael Wassom
Mike Scott (RIP)
Sebastian Gil

There are probably many others who have also served. If you know of any, please make me aware so that I can add them to this list.

10/23/2022

The Dons took their first overnight trip since 2019 as the team made its way back to the Mt. SAC Invitational and in so doing, collected a team win and a couple of all-time team time marks to conclude the regular season on a high note. Our races weren’t quite as early as they have been in previous years as the boys varsity ran first at 11:00 AM. It led to a more relaxed morning as the team could have breakfast at the hotel and head off to the course at 9, leaving plenty of time to warm up. Both varsity teams planned to lay off the hot early pace and to make their moves starting at the top of the switchbacks. In my opinion, both groups laid off that pace a little bit too much, but they moved well when the time came.

The boys were competing a little bit undermanned as top three runner, Arran Gill Gulati has been battling some minor tendinitis and did not race and front man Ryken Mak ran, but is working his way back from illness and predictably never looked like himself. At the mile mark, Ryken was our #2 runner, with Prithvij Rajesh leading the way in just 5:14. At the time, Prithvij was in 34th place and the team was in 7th with 229 points. Valencia was leading with 98. The team woke up in the second mile and moved as they planned. Passing through the fading masses on the switchbacks, then attacking the downhill and powering over poopout, the team shed 98 points from its first mile score and moved up to 4th place in the race. Prithvij was still leading the way, now into the top 20 with four of the top five runners in 31st place or better (Ethan Ding ended up the team’s #5 on the day, but the mat didn’t pick up his 2nd mile split). At that point, Valencia was still in the lead, now with 101 points. Headed into Resovoir Hill the pursuit continued as Amador Valley runners moved ahead of more and more opponents. Standing at the bottom of Poopout, I knew it would be close. Live results showed that we were the first team to have five runners across the line and in fact, we had seven across the line before anyone else had five. But our up front presence was not enough to be comfortable until the rest of the scores rolled in. Prithvij ended up our top runner, finishing in 12th place in 16:33. Freshman, Aiden Versteeg took 17th in 16:36 to be #2 on the team with a mark that makes him the #2 freshman all-time on the course only behind Jack Gray. Ryken Mak finished courageously just behind Ryken in 16:38. Jacob Camacho then was next in 28th place in 16:51 and Ethan Ding rounded out the top 5 in 32nd, closing the scoring in 16:53. Kurtis Bauman finished in 36th place in 17:04 and Aditya Chudasama finished as our #7 in 17:12. When the final tallies came out, they showed Amador Valley with 108 points and a slight win over Beckman High School, which finished with 116. Valencia faltered over the last mile and ended in 5th place. The boys’ time of 1:23:31 is the #9 fastest mark on the all-time list. That time removes the 2016 team, which included the aforementioned Jack Gray when he was a freshman, Drew Helmers, Alex Laurence, Thomas Gallagher, and Aidan McCarthy, who is now our now 4th fastest freshman. Interestingly, Aidan’s historic freshman time, which made him our 5th best runner that day, would have only been tied for our #7 today as he and Aditya both ran 17:12.

On the girls’ side, the race started the same way with our girls burying themselves deep in the pack and trying to work their way out. Tessa Jennings, who had been battling illness and a minor hamstring strain over the last few weeks, returned to lead us through the mile in 31st place with the team in 7th. Her time through the mile was just 6:19 and more than 10 seconds clear of the next Amador Valley runner. We had a team score of 177 with Granada Hills leading at just 38 points. Just like the boys, the big move happened in the 2nd mile, where the team moved up to 4th, bringing their score down to 120 points. At this point, Los Alamitos had taken over the lead and still only had a score of 42. Tessa was still our top runner and she was also into the top 20 with the rest of our scorers between 29th and 36th. Over the last mile, the girls were able to trim another 21 points off of their score, highlighted by Tessa moving up to 14th for a time of 19:46 and by Erika Pettersson who moved up ten positions to finish 2nd for the team and 26th overall in 20:33. Kacie Wong also moved up seven positions in the last mile to finish in 28nd place in a time of 20:36. Milla Zuniga finished in 29th in 20:37 and Dahlia Versteeg was 30th in 20:38 to close the scoring. Heejee Yoon was our 6th runner in 46th place in 21:35 and Juhi Goyal was our 7th runner, finishing in 50th place in 21:55. The girls finished with a team time of 1:42:10, which is #8 all-time. No longer qualifying for the all-time list is the team of Ella McCarthy, Taya Small, Lois Hong, Erica Haley, and our own Dahlia Versteeg who combined to run 1:45:00 in 2019.

The best placement of the day came from our girls’ JV race, where senior Katy Clark finished in 5th place in a time of 22:05. Katy’s race ex*****on was near perfect as she was in 23rd place at the mile (also our highest early race placement of the day, then 7th at the 2 mile, and up to 5th to finish. At one point Katy made her way up to 4th and looked to be making a move toward the 3rd and second place runners, but just couldn’t quite maintain her momentum coming down Reservoir Hill.

Full results of today’s race are available at: https://finishedresults.com/meets/3979 (we were in races #70, 71, 76, 77, 78, 79, 80, and 81

The updated top 10 team times have been updated and are viewable.

The team will be back in action on 11/5 when we contest the EBAL Championships at Newhall Park.

10/08/2022

It’s been a few weeks, but the Dons’ season is now well underway. I am writing this post on 99-South as the bus heads toward this morning’s Clovis Invitational. Our boys and girls will compete in the Extra Large races. Results of the meet can be found here: Finished Results - Timing Track & Field, Cross Country, Road Races, Cycling, Swimming, Paddle Board, including a link to live results.

Since I last posted, we have raced at the De La Salle Invitational and had a dual meet against Foothill, where we recognized this year’s seniors. Since then we’ve had a couple of strong weeks of training to prepare for our shot at the state meet course. Those who won’t be running Clovis today due to our entries being limited, participated in a time trial on Thursday where performances were outstanding.

Coming off of our win at Ed Sias, the Dons had a bit of a rude awakening at De La Salle, which turned out to be the strongest race in Northern California to date (even still a few weeks later). For many of our varsity athletes, it was their first time running a varsity 3 mile race and JV athletes were also running three miles, which is a distance that many were not too experienced with. The inexperience showed a little bit in the strong field as both the boys and the girls got stuck in the pack at the start. The boys’ position was better than the girls’ early on and as such, they were able to recover and race solidly. The boys were again led by Ryken Mak, who had an outstanding race, running 16:13. Arran Gill Gulati and Prithvij Rajesh both ran under 17 minutes for the first time (16:43 and 16:48) and although he didn’t quite run as well as Ed Sias, freshman Aiden Versteeg was still the #4 runner in 17:17. We will see this morning how much he learned from that racing experience. Jacob Camacho, Ethan Ding, and Aditya Chudasama ran together for 5, 6, and 7 all finishing within one second of each other in 17:35, 17:35, and 17:46. That performance was good for 8th place in the field of 40 teams. Five of the teams that beat us are currently ranked in Northern California’s top 10.

The girls had a tougher time coming back after finding themselves in poor position off the starting line. At 600m, not a single Amador Valley girl was in the top 100 in the race. The good news was that they worked hard during the race to move up. By the end, six of the seven girls were in the top 100, but even in a big field, that’s not enough to get back to contention. Dahlia Versteeg led the group in 66th place with a time of 20:50. She was followed by Milla Zuniga, Tessa Jennings, and Erika Petterson, who were all within 15 seconds of her (20:56, 21:01, and 21:05). Heejee Yoon rounded out the scoring 11 seconds later, as the group that packed up well at Ed Sias, did so again with a scoring gap of just 26 seconds. Kacie Wong was 6th for the Dons in 21:31 and Dani Robinson made her varsity debut in 21:41. The team finished 11th out of 37 on the day and with a stronger start the team has shown the ability to compete with the teams a few spots ahead of them.

It is worth noting that Juhi Goyal ran a terrific race in the JV division, running 21:09. If Juhi had run that same time in the varsity race, we would have finished 10th instead of 11th. The JV girls did not have enough runners to field a team, but the frosh-soph girls did. Led by Mai Falcone’s 14:44 on the 2 mile course, that group was able to finish 7th. On the boys’ side, the lower division races went pretty well. Kurtis Bauman had a huge race, finishing 3rd overall and 1st in the scoring, running a time of 17:45. His time also led the boys to a 7th place finish out of 24 teams. Sophomore, Tai Falcone led the frosh/soph/JV unlimited team to a 9th place finish with a time of 13:02 in the two mile race. The frosh/soph boys were great though, showing excellent depth to finish 4th in the race. Everett Wogsland was awesome, leading the team through in 11:53. From there, the group of Aarav Singh, Zevyn Nickel, Tommy Hekl, and Logan Martin combined for the 4th place finish and the 8th fastest team time an Amador Valley group has recorded on the 2 mile course at Newhall park, running 60:37. No longer qualifying for the top 10 list is the team of Drew Helmers, Jovan Perez, Zach Hartley, Jarod Moyers, and Nick Maggi, who ran 61:04 at the Nike Invitational back in 2014.

One week after De La Salle, we ran a dual meet against Foothill. We ran this meet to take the opportunity to honor the seniors of both schools. We only ran two races, a boys and a girls race, but for those who typically run varsity, it was a controlled effort where we aimed to work on some of the things that didn’t go as well at De La Salle. Both groups aimed to get out hard over the first 800m and in doing so, essentially put Foothill behind the 8 ball right away. The race wasn’t as crowded as De La Salle, so we couldn’t simulate that, but getting used to being out hard was an important thing for our group. After 800m they were asked to settle in to a tempo pace for 800m, which did allow the top Foothill runners back into the race. But at the mile mark, the Dons surged again. At 1.5 miles, the team settled in one more time and remained at tempo pace for a mile, before finishing the race fast. The race was a 5k and considering the fact that half of the race was intentionally run below race effort, the times ended up looking pretty good. Ryken Mak took home the win in the earlier boys’ race in a time of 16:51 with the Dons overwhelming Foothill 21-39. Amador Valley’s #7 runner was 10th in the race. The team order was similar to last week, with one exception. Kurtis Bauman, who had run so well in the JV race at De La Salle, broke into the top seven, actually finishing as our fifth man (7th overall) in a time of 17:23.

On the girls’ side, Foothill’s Katelyn Espino took the win in 20:00, but that was about all that Foothill had to feel good about on the day. Despite missing two of our top three runners, Amador Valley finished in the 2-6 places, rounding out a comfortable team win. Once again, Dahlia Versteeg led the way, running a time of 20:35. Freshman, Kacie Wong ran particularly well, finishing third for the team in 20:51, while Juhi Goyal showed that her JV performance at De La Salle was not a fluke, finishing fourth for the Dons in 20:59, just adding depth to the group.

Our entries to Clovis are limited, so we had a time trial on the Shadow Cliffs 3k course for those who couldn’t go. It was awesome to see some of the guys who just started running before the first time trial in August make huge improvements in just 7 weeks. Rish*t Agnihotri had the biggest PR, running 3:30 faster than he did to start the year. That’s about 1:50 per mile faster. Aarav Shah also PRed by over 3 minutes, knocking 3:07 off of his previous time. It was also exciting to see Eric Chen pick up his first ever win by running 12:23. Eric knocked 45 seconds off the time that he ran a few weeks ago. Mai Falcone was the only girl to run the time trial (she ran with the boys, not by herself) and also PRed by 27 seconds, crossing the line in 14:22.

So we’ll see how it all plays out this morning. As I conclude this post, we are still on 99, but approaching the Avenue 9 cut across. The sun is up and the team is starting to wake up. It’s going to get hot today, but for the early races, conditions should be great. I’ll try to post an update on the way home.

An updated top 10 list for the boys' 2 mile at Newhall Park is also posted.

09/25/2022

Amador Valley had a few alums in action this weekend in NCAA action. Jacob Lawrence made his Portland State debut at the Dellinger Classic in Oregon. He was PSU's #6 man on the day, finishing the 8k course in 41st place out of 92 runners in a time of 24:42 (about 4:57 per mile). Portland State finished 4th out of 9 teams. There is a recap of the meet that Jacob is mentioned in at the following link: https://goviks.com/news/2022/9/23/XC_20220923.aspx.

Although neither is probably happy with their results, John Lester and Aidan Boyle both competed at the Cowboy Jamboree in Stillwater, Oklahoma this past weekend. The Cowboy Jamboree is one of the biggest meets in the country and featured several of the top ranked teams in the country, including #1 NAU, who happened to lose to #3 BYU and John's team, Stanford. For John though, who I was surprised to see traveling for cross country, it was a struggle as he finished in 188th place out of 241 runners in a time of 26:23. Aidan fared a little bit better, but probably wanted a little bit more himself, as he finished in 134th place in a time of 25:02 as the 8th runner for the Air Force Academy. Stanford was second in the race and Air Force was 9th out of 27 teams. Results of the Cowboy Jamboree can be found here: https://www.tfrrs.org/results/xc/19304/Cowboy_Jamboree

Jordan MacIntosh and Alex Barbour led the Portland State men's and women's cross country teams with a pair of historic performances at the front of the Vikings' lineups, as the teams returned to action Friday at the Bill Dellinger Invitational at Pine Ridge Golf Club.

09/18/2022

Several Amador Valley alums were in action this weekend at the UC Riverside Invitational. Amador Valley had 3 alums in 3 different races. In the men's invitational race, Aidan McCarthy led the way for Cal Poly's dominant team victory, finishing 2nd overall in the 8k in a time of 23:45 (an average of about 4:45 per mile in the 4.96 mile race). In the race of 296 people, he was beaten only by Arizona State standout Vincent Mauri. Cal Poly scored just 59 points in the 31 team meet and outdistanced itself from runner-up Southern Utah by 31 points.

The Cal Poly men also won the open race, this time over UC Santa Barbara (and 18 other teams) and received a scoring effort from alum Euan Houston. Euan was Cal Poly's 4th runner in that race and finished 13th overall out of 147 runners. His time of 25:14 over the same 8k course was a pace of about 5:03 per mile.

On the women's side, Ash Baudin ran 21:35 in the Invitational race over the 6k distance (about 3.75 miles). That works out to a pace of about 5:47 per mile and was good for 68th in a race of 265. According to the article linked below, that is the 5th fastest 6k time on any course ever recorded by a UCSC athlete and was good enough to lead the UC Santa Cruz Banana Slugs to a 23rd place finish in a race of 31 teams.

Here is a recap from the Cal Poly website, which heavily features Aidan as well as a team photo of the varsity, which includes Aidan: https://gopoly.com/news/2022/9/17/cross-country-cal-poly-men-claim-first-women-capture-second-at-uc-riverside-invitational.aspx

Here is a recap from the UC Santa Cruz website, which also heavily features Ash and has a picture of her with one of her teammates amidst a crowded start: https://goslugs.com/news/2022/9/17/school-records-galore-as-cross-country-races-at-uc-riverside.aspx

RIVERSIDE- The UC Santa Cruz Cross Country team showed their strong preseason training paid off by competing wonderfully in a very talent-laden early season competition.

09/15/2022

Last weekend, AVHS alum Mason Romant competed in his first college cross country meet for Chabot College, running a 4 mile race at Woodward Park in Fresno. In his debut, Mason finished 21st for Gladiators out of 122 runners in a time of 22:28.4, which was third on the team. Chabot finished fifth out of 13 teams in the meet. Full results can be found at https://www.tfrrs.org/results/xc/19709/Fresno_Invitational_2022.

09/11/2022

One week after not racing due to buses not showing up, the Amador Valley Dons did not squander their first racing opportunity of the season. Returning to the Ed Sias Invitational for the first time since 2018, the Dons walked away with wins in both the boys' and girls' large school varsity races and piled up competitive performances in the other divisions as well. The meet started with the freshman boys' race where the team managed to take 4th out of 18 teams, despite our best freshman running varsity (more on him later). Tommy Hekl led the Dons for most of the race before being overtaken in the last stretch by Zevyn Nickel. The two finished in 8th and 14th overall, with Callan Mak not far behind in 17th. Our frosh/soph boys (our team was comprised of all sophomores) did one better than the freshmen by finishing 4th. Zevyn's time of 12:12 makes him the 10th fastest freshman that we've had run the Hidden Valley Park course.

It was an impressive team performance as the spread between 1-5 was just 21 seconds, led by Aarav Singh in 21st place. Colin Gillette rounded out the scoring in 38th place in the field of 169 runners. Some of the teams that beat us ran their best freshmen in this race as well, putting us at a slight disadvantage, but I suppose that also helped us in the freshman race.

Katherine Chen led the girls' frosh/soph group to an 11th place finish behind a 21st place individual performance of her own. Her time of 15:04 makes her the 8th fastest freshman that we have had run that course.

Our next race was the aforementioned boys' varsity race followed by the girls' varsity race. The two races were near carbon copies of each other as the two teams masterfully executed the race plan surprising the fields to win both races. Although there was no score given at the mile mark, it is likely that the Dons were in about 4th place at that point in the race and not all that close to the lead. What's more, is that neither team had a runner in the top 20 halfway through and the team combined to have eight runners in those positions at the finish line. It was effective pack running that led to gradual, yet steady movement up in the field throughout the second mile that led to victory on the day. Both races were beautiful to watch for anyone who is a fan of the sport. The boys' were led by Ryken Mak, who was in 21st place at the bridge crossing and worked his way to 12th in a time of 10:59. He was followed by freshman Aiden Versteeg, who broke the Amador Valley freshman record on the course with a time of 11:04. He was the fastest freshman on the day in any race by 14 seconds as Miramonte had a freshman in the small school varsity race who ran 11:18. Aiden was 15th overall. Arran Gill-Gulati made some history of his own, finishing right behind Aiden in 16th place. Arran's time of 11:05 makes him the #4 sophomore that we've had on that course. Prithvij Rajesh finished in 18th place in a time of 11:18 making him the 8th fastest junior to run the course for the Dons. Fellow junior Jacob Camacho rounded out the scoring for the Dons finishing in 30th place in a time of 11:26. That group notched the #4 team time that we have ever had on the course, finishing in 55:41. Although the scoring stopped after Jacob, that wasn't enough to win the race. In a nice reminder that your #6 and #7 runners matter even though they don't score, junior Ethan Ding and senior Aditya Chudasama finished 34th and 38th in times of 11:29 and 11:36. They both finished in front of Clayton Valley's #5 man, adding 2 points to Clayton Valley's score. Those two points were meaningful as we went on to beat Clayton Valley by just 1, 91-92 with Dublin in 3rd with 103. No longer qualifying for the team time list was the team of Theo Carter, Joe Aceret, Zach Perry, Michael Olwin, and Taylor Peissner who ran 60:08 in 2008.

The girls' race followed a similar narrative as the girls also worked their way up in the pack, but it wasn't as close at the end as it was for the boys. Tessa Jennings ran a stellar race, coming through the mile in 20th place and working her way all the way up to 9th. Her time of 13:21 is the #7 time for an Amador Valley athlete on the course and #2 among juniors. She was followed by seniors Milla Zuniga and Dahlia Versteeg in 15th and 17th places. Both of them were credited with times of 13:40, which makes them the 4th and 5th fastest seniors that we have had run the course. Erika Pettersson was 21st in a time of 13:50 making her the #7 junior all-time. Kacie Wong was the second fastest freshman in the race finishing in a time of 14:07. Kacie was the 6th fastest freshman in all races throughout the day and became the 4th fastest freshman on that course for Amador Valley. Heejee Yoon and Juhi Goyal ran as the #6 and #7 for the Dons in 36th and 41st with times of 14:31 and 14:37. The girls' team time, like the boys' ranks 4th in school history at 60:35 and just 8 seconds off of the #2 time. No longer qualifying for the all-time list is the team of Lauren McCarthy (for those who know, that's Coach Lauren with her maiden name, because she wasn't married in high school), Cory MacDonald, Grace Elliott, Kerry McCollough, and Caroline Lowry who ran 1:14:55 in 2006 (that was my first year coaching, but I only coached the boys that year.

Following the varsity races were 3 JV races. Like the freshman boys, our boys' JV finished 5th. Our only top 20 finish in that race was Kurtis Baumann, who finished 11th in 12:06. Jonah Kiang and Gino Fidone were just outside the top 20, finishing 21st and 22nd.

The girls' JV team didn't have enough runners to score, but that race was highlighted by Dani Robinson 6th place finish. Dani's finish matched the highest placed individual finish for an Amador Valley athlete on the day. Her time was 14:31.

In the boys' frosh-soph, JV overflow race, Amador Valley was 2nd behind Saint Ignatius. Jonas Emig led the way with the other 6th place finish for the Dons in a time of 13:06. Tai Falcone was 10th in a time of 13:18, Kyle Sommerfield also finished in the top 20 (16th to be exact) with a time of 13:27.

Full results of the meet can be found at: https://diablotiming.com/results/2022-09-10/mp/

Updated all-time lists can be found at the following links:

Boys' Team Times-https://drive.google.com/file/d/1BOTgsj7hXokyx4yeAkFDzrb_IeraA8Xr/view?usp=sharing

Girls' Team Times-https://drive.google.com/file/d/1XRghy1V6bIyEo79YG77GNfwHGBWzhQ0-/view?usp=sharing

Hidden Valley Park, Girls' Individual-https://drive.google.com/file/d/1W8ZLyEFMvBf3SyP1td3G4N3lSfm4Vb6o/view?usp=sharing

The Dons will be back in action next week at the De La Salle/Carondelet Nike Invitational.