Today's cross country meet at Lindley Meadow in Golden Gate Park brought some of the best division V talent in the North Coast Section (NCS) together for a mini preview of the section final. While some teams chose to run some of their younger talent in the F/S divisions, most came ready to demonstrate their strength in the varsity divisions.
Because of the large number of teams, Cross Country in the Bay Counties League (BCL) is divided into East and West. The season dual meets and league finals are run separately except for the annual BCL East/West Challenge. The start and finish of the course used for this race takes place at Lindley Meadow with a portion of the race running parallel to the famous Golden Gate Park Polo Field. Map of the 5K course can be seen below.
Following the F/S races (results posted below), the girls' varsity race got under way. With the state's #3 ranked College Prep girls running most of their top runners in the F/S division, the race went to #4 ranked Crystal Springs Uplands (CSU) girls with a narrow 2 point victory over the hard charging Marin Academy (MA) girls (39 to 41). Winning the individual race was Marin Academy's Alesandra Roger (pictured to the left at the 1.5 mile mark) who is slowly regaining her form after an injury curtailed her Track and Field season. Roger lead the whole race trailed closely by College Prep's Barbara Barnes. Passing the 2 mile mark in 5th place, MA's freshman Lucy McCullough made a late rally in the final mile and finished one second behind her 1st place teammate (19:49 to 19:50). With 3 runners in the top 6, MA, ranked 6th in the last state meet rankings, showed they are ready to join CSU and CPS in the battle for the NCS title.
The boys' individual honors went to the East as CPS's Charlie Sauter and Chinese Christian's (CCS) Victor Ho (pictured to the left following their race) continued their friendly rivalry, working together for most of the race. Sauter pulled away from Ho during the last mile reversing their finish from the Stanford Invitational (16:44 to 16:52). Also dipping under 17 minutes was MA's T Bliska as he recorded 16:56 for the sneaky slow 5K course. The rest of the top five included CPS's Jamie Lawrence in 4th and International's Troy Calandra in 5th with respective 17:04 and 17:12 clockings. The team race went to the West and University as they packed 6 runners between 7th and 13th places. The 1st place Red Devils scored 47 followed by 2nd place Berean Christian at 71 and the 3rd place CPS Cougars with 85. Things could tighten up considerably once CPS returns two of their top 5 runners who did not run in today's meet.
The league final for each respective league will take place on Friday, November 2nd at the following locations: BCL West Final at the same Lindley Meadow course while the BCL Final will take place on the hilly Joaquin Miller Park Course.
Results from today's meet can be found at the following links thanks to Recordtiming.com:
F/S Girls' Results
F/S Boys' Results
Varsity Girls' Results
Varsity Boys' Results
Below are the winning varsity teams (Crystal Springs Uplands girls and the University boys)
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