Monday, September 19, 2016

Darting here and there...

Off the top of my head, here we go.

North Coast Section changes
Lots of changes this year in North Coast Section especially at the section level with many teams dropping down to a different division this year. It will be very interesting to see how it all plays out and in the next couple of weeks, I will post the first in-season rankings to see what the divisions look like at this point. If this is all new to you, here are the divisions for this season which you can check out at this LINK. The other changes are that several schools changed leagues such as St. Joseph Notre Dame moving to BCL East, Dublin moving to EBAL and College ParkClayton Valley and Northgate moving to DAL (there are other teams that moved as well). You can check out all the leagues on the NCS site at this LINK.

Central Coast Section course site
Toro Park is scheduled to be the site of the CCS meet this year since this is an even numbered year. Due to the Sobranes fires, Toro Park has been used as a staging area for fire fighters and at this point, the park is still closed. It's still unclear about when the park will be open which means the location of the CCS meet is still at Toro Park at this point but it is still possible that there might be the need for a change of location.


Sac-Joaquin Section Rankings
Now that the SJS has released the divisions for the 2016 season, I can begin ranking each division in the section. I will need to do some research and reach out to coaches out there but the plan is for the first edition of the SJS rankings to be posted before next week. In the meantime, please feel free to discuss any of the individual and team state contenders as we have had to see most of them compete.


Newspaper links and videos
In the past, I have posted links to newspaper articles as well as videos. I still do but in order not to overcrowd the front page, you will now find most of those links and videos on my twitter account at https://twitter.com/CCExpress, instagram account at https://www.instagram.com/albertjcaruana/ and Facebook page at https://www.facebook.com/crosscountryexpress/. To help increase the audience to those social media sites, please follow, like, tag etc. You will not be disappointed.

MilesplitCA
For the past two years, I have also been contributing to ca.milesplit.com which I have enjoyed reaching out to a larger part of the state. For those of you that don't know, MileSplit was started by a Florida runner named Jason Byrne when he was 19 years old. The site grew from the sunshine state and expanded to the entire nation. You can read a bit more about Jason at this LINK. Jason sold MileSplit to Flosports 3 years ago and at this point, there are 150 people that work for Milesplit. If you have ever wondered why our two sports (Cross Country & Track and Field) continue to grow at such a rapid rate and why times continue to drop, look no further than what sites like Milesplit have done to help promote our sport and amazing athletes. Aside from ca.milesplit.com, check out the national site at www.milesplit.com. You can also follow on twitter at https://twitter.com/milesplitca, instagram at https://www.instagram.com/milesplitca/ and Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/MilesplitCA/.


Reaching Out to Me
While I do post daily on this site, there are definitely days when I am looking for material to post. If you have links, videos, newspaper articles, tips etc that you feel should be shared with everybody, please don't hesitate to reach out to me at albertjcaruana@gmail.com. A lot of what I post on the site has been relayed to me by athletes, coaches and parents. 


If you have anything to add such as any thoughts about the start of this season, please feel free to comment below. 

5 comments:

Hank said...

Another change this year is the San Jose Mercury News coverage area, they have expanded to include the East Bay so alot of NCS teams are now in their coverage. They've also include these teams in their Football and Volleyball rankings (these are no longer just CCS rankings). In the past I would send them the CCS XC rankings on a weekly basis and they would print them in the HS ScoreBoard section of the sports page. Don't know if you've noticed but that section of the sports page seems to have been discontinued. Since LynbrookSports.com is primarily a CCS Section site, I will continue to post the CCS XC rankings and will continue to send to the Mercury (they are still interested in how the CCS is doing) but they will not be publishing these rankings unless their additional coverage area is included in the rankings. So I'll leave this to anyone who would like to take on a CCS & NCS (Bay Area) ranking, all you need to is send to the Mercury News (no guarantee that they'll print it but at least they'll have the data (or as I've been told, it's now called "evidence".)

hank

Anonymous said...

SJS-A couple thoughts off the top of my head
D1 Boys - Team - Jesuit, Individuals - Vernau, Grijalva and everybody else
D1 Girls - Team - Davis Individuals - Castiglioni
D2 Boys - Team - Bella Vista
D2 Girls - St. Francis Individuals - Fauria, Vandergrift

Anonymous said...

I'd like to add Alize Hartke to the conversation in the SJS, she had a breakout run at Lowell last week with her 17:10 (2.93mi) and the 3rd best ever for the course. She was just 7 seconds off of Rylee Bowen and her course record. I know someone was talking about 2 El Camino girls that currently have 2 of the top 3, three mile times on athletic.net, but head to head, Alize beat them both last weekend in SF. Not sure where she will fall in the mix, but she will be part of the soup for sure.

Anonymous said...

Didn't see comments regarding Farmer's Invitational. This was the first time for the "new" course setup which will be used for the NCS. It appears from watching the races and the times posted that this layout will be at least 15 seconds faster than the old course. Weather on Saturday started in the 60's but by Varsity Girls and Boys races it was mid 70's or higher, no breeze. I believe the winning time in the Boys varsity race was 15:10.

Anonymous said...

Wow! Clovis just released the participants in the boys and girls Championship (seeded races) and they are stacked!
Boys Teams: Last year's state meet D1 podium teams; Great Oak, Dana Hills, Jesuit, and Madera South, Claremont, Bella Vista, McQueen(NV), Monte Vista....
Boys Ind: Vernau, Teare, Grijalva, Fitgerald, Silva, Corcoran
Girls Teams: Davis, Dana Hills, Great Oak, Monte Vista, St. Francis
Girls Individuals: Donahue and Land
Loaded, loaded, loaded. Looking forward to getting down there and seeing the fireworks.

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