The San Lorenzo Valley High School boys and girls cross country team headed to the annual Stanford Invitational meet in Palo Alto last weekend to compete with 37 other California schools.
At the Cougars’ third meet in the still-young season, the team featured many new faces after losing several key runners — such as Anna Maxwell — to graduation.
Even so, the Cougars picked up where last year’s team left off, with the girls squad in particular delivering a strong showing as they placed sixth out of 38 teams in the event.
Sophomore Abbey Meck — one of two returning members of last year’s team and ranked No. 6 in the state — stood out as she placed third overall with a time of 18:08 on the 3.1-mile course.
“She had the fastest time of any girl in the (Santa Cruz Coast Athletics League),” said Coach Rob Collins.
The girls’ team, currently ranked at No. 1 in Central Coast Section’s Division 4, and No. 8 overall in statewide Division 4 standings, followed Meck at the meet with senior Kayla Gibson (18:47), sophomore Carolina Moreno-Guzman (20:29), sophomore Katie Lamb (20:39), junior Nicole Roth (20:52), freshman Hannah Sandles (22:08), and senior Kaylee Green (22:28).
The boys’ team faced stiff competition in their event, Collins said, and was not helped by what he described as a malfunction in the tracking chips carried in the runners’ shoes to time races.
“We’re really proud of the boys unfortunately there seemed to be a mix-up,” Collins said, adding that the times that were recorded by competition officials through the tracking data did not match with those of the film.
“For some reason, our numbers did not match.”
Sophomore Ian Gallagher led the Cougar boys with a time of 17:07. He was followed by senior Eli Young (17:22), junior Mairo Kuntze (17:26), sophomore Alejandro Corona (17:36), sophomore Anthony Campbell (17:48), senior Connor Lydon (18:05), and sophomore Kevin Clark (18:21).
Of the sophomore-heavy boys’ squad, Collins said that while the powerful Scotts Valley High team would be difficult to catch in SCCAL rankings, he expected their hard work and training to show in competition as they build strength and grow.
“They’ve been training really hard,” Collins said.
For both the boys and girls squads, he said, the month of September — with only a handful of meets — has been used to train and prepare for the challenging meets ahead.
The next major challenge for the Cougars will by the Mount Sac Invitationals, which are scheduled for Oct. 23 and 24 in Pomona.
“We’ve taken it really slow — we didn’t really have a lot of races in September,” Collins said. “We’re young on both sides, so we want to build up strength.”
