Cross country
St. Joseph Notre Dame enjoys a youth movement
It's extremely rare for a good boys varsity team to consist primarily of underclassmen.
But all of the scorers on St. Joseph Notre Dame's boys squad at Saturday's Stanford Invitational Division V race were freshmen or sophomores. Paced by top-10 finishes from freshman Gabe Arias and sophomore Nick Ratto, the Pilots placed fourth as a team with 166 points.
Arias was fifth in 16 minutes, 31 seconds for the 3.1-mile course. Ratto was ninth in 16:40.
"(Arias has) great discipline and great work ethic coming from his Pleasanton Heat club program," St. Joseph Notre Dame coach Tony Fong said. "Seeing Gabe out there working makes (the other team members) want to work just as hard. I love it."
The big local winner Saturday at Stanford was Campolindo. Both the Cougars' boys and girls squads won team titles in the Division III races, and Carrie Verdon continued her undefeated campaign with a victory in the girls race. Verdon's time of 17:59 was the fastest East Bay girls time of the invitational and third among Northern California girls. Teammate Grace Orders finished second in the race (18:10), as Campolindo had a team score of 44. California's Elaine McVay was second in the Division I race (18:33).
The Campolindo boys, who had a score of 48, were paced by a two-three finish from Thomas Joyce (15:52) and Dylan Laucher (16:05). Castro Valley's Ben Eversole, who was 19th in the seeded race, had the fastest East Bay boys time of the invitational (15:49).
Another local team which won its race was the College Prep girls squad. The team's top runner Saturday was Adrienne Strait (eighth, 19:18), as College Prep finished with a score of 67 in the Division V race.
6 comments:
Nick Ratto is a jr
I would not call this a "youth movement" but more that they got a bunch of quality young runners. Or did they actually demote or move some runners from last years to the JV team?
Is Nick Ratto..related to Ray Ratto the comcast/knbr commentator?
It seems like they have added some very talented younger runners. This happens more so on the girls side but it does happen on the boys side as well.
Yes, Nick Ratto is a junior.
Yes, they did move some of the varsity runners back to run these races so that they could win.
Yes, Nick is related to Ray. Nick's dad and Ray are 2nd cousins.
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