Local cross country teams headed to State competition

After a second-place finish at the Central Coast Section championships on Nov. 15 in Salinas, the San Lorenzo Valley High girls’ cross country team is headed to Woodward Park in Fresno for the California CIF Cross Country State Championships on Saturday, Nov. 29.
They will be joined there by the Scotts Valley High boys’ cross country team, as well.
Rob Collins, head coach of the SLV team, said that he was pleased to see his team return to the state championships a year after losing five star runners to graduation.
“I’m actually pretty happy where we’re at right now,” he said. “However we do, I’m pleased and I’m just glad to make it back into the state meet.”
The Cougar team will include freshman Hannah Sandles, sophomores Abbey Meck, Carolina Moreno-Guzman, Katie Lamb, Juliana Manceau, junior Nicole Roth, and senior Kayla Gibson — who just received a scholarship to run cross country for Portland State University, an NCAA Division 1-ranked program.
“I’m pretty happy how we ran this year,” Collins said. “We just want to run well, and do well there.”
Collins said that this would be the first year that SLV — and the Scotts Valley High boys’ team, who also qualified for the state meet — will be competing in Division 4 of the much-tougher of the CIF Southern California Section.
“It’s a much harder division to do well,” he said. “We’re definitely racing kids that are double our school sizes.”
The Scotts Valley High School boys’ cross country team also placed second in the Division 4 boys’ CCS championship meet. Nick Heath, Draven Hawk, John Ross, Luke McCartney, Porter Wesson, Venny Petrini, and Davis Ross will also be headed to Fresno representing the Falcons.
Also making waves in the world of cross country are a pair of runners from San Lorenzo Valley Middle School.
Seventh-grader Kayla Penny and eighth-grader Chris Anderson — runners on the Fall Creek Track Club, which is coached by Collins — each qualified for the USA Track and Field state championships for the Junior Olympics, which are set to take place on Sunday, Nov. 30 in Folsom.
Penny’s time of 12:35 at the qualifier race placed her 14^th overall out of 75 runners in the three-kilometer cross-country race for 11- and 12-year-olds.
Anderson, racing against eighth and ninth graders, placed third overall out of 62 — with a time of 12:39 — in the four-kilometer race in the 13- and 14-year-old division at the qualifiers.
According to Collins, if the runners place in upper half in Folsom, they have a chance to run in the national meet, scheduled for Dec. 13 in Myrtle Beach, S.C.