Sunday, December 10, 2017

2017 NorCal Cross Country Awards

Now that the 2017 XC season is complete, here are my awards for this past cross country season.
2011 Award Winners
2012 Award Winners
2013 Award Winners
2014 Award Winners
2015 Award Winners
2016 Award Winners
Feel free to share your comments below.

Most Valuable Runner (boys)-Liam Anderson Redwood (NCS)
Most Valuable Runner (girls)-Elena Denner Oak Ridge (SJS)

Most Impressive Performance (boys)-Liam Anderson Redwood (NCS) at NXN
Most Impressive Performance (girls)-Maddy Denner Oak Ridge (SJS) at Clovis Invitational

Most Impressive Performance (boys' team)-St. Francis (CCS) at CA State Meet/NXN/Dublin (NCS) at Clovis Invitational
Most Impressive Performance (girls' team)-Granada (NCS) at NCS MOC Meet

Rising Star (boys)-Matt Strangio Jesuit (SJS)
Rising Star (girls)-Caroline Garrett Oakland Tech (OAK)

Most Inspirational (boys)-Open to suggestions
Most Inspirational (girls)-Open to suggestions

Most Improved Runner (boys)-Connor Livingston De La Salle (NCS)/Nicholas Medearis Crystal Springs Uplands (CCS)
Most Improved Runner (girls)-Claire Jackson University (NCS)

Lifetime Achievement Award (boys)-Meika Beaudoin-Rousseau Bellarmine (CCS)
Lifetime Achievement Award (girls)-Mari Friedman Santa Cruz (CCS)

Buster Posey (rookie of the year)-Kamran Murray Menlo (CCS)
Buster Posey (rookie of the year)-Layla Ruiz Watsonville (CCS)

Best Robin to Batman (best supporting actor)-Dublin and St. Francis top two runners.
Best Robin to Batman (best supporting actress)-Maddy and Elena Denner Oak Ridge (SJS)

Best Three Amigos-Shyam Kumar, Eric Eng, Colton Colonna St. Francis (CCS)
Best Three Amigas-Colleen McCandless, Kalea Bartolotto, Gracie Dupuis Granada (NCS)

Boys Coach of the Year (Directing)-Phil and Sam Pompei St. Francis (CCS)
Girls Coach of the Year (Directing)-Noel and Jeremy Mattern Granada (NCS)

Any other awards?

22 comments:

Anonymous said...

Lifetime Achievement: MBR

Menlo XC/Track Coach said...

Most Improved - Collin Ullrich, Matt Strangio, Jorge Estrella & Alize Hartke
Most Impressive Performance (too many this year) - Meika BR (Serra Invite 14:45 followed by a SoCal crowd silencing performance @ MT SAC) & Liam Anderson's gutsy 3rd @ NXN & St Francis Boys ALL SEASON LONG & Rylee Bowen @ State
Three Amigos - Shyam Kumar/Colton Colonna/Eric Eng
MVP - Elena Denner, Liam Anderson & MBR




Menlo XC/Track Coach said...

And agreed with 2:10PM with Lifetime Achievement (whatever that means) Award to MBR & on the girls side Mari Friedman...these 2 athletes will continue to do great things in college (Stanford & OSU). They are both amazing humble kids who continue to make our sport better as great ambassadors...I'm a big fan of these two kids. And a shameless plug for Robert Miranda as well (not for Menlo nor for me at all, but for NorCal athletes)...Thanks again athletes and coaches for the great job done this Fall...It's a great time to be a NorCal XC/TF Fan!

Menlo XC/Track Coach said...

Sorry and one more...Nicky Medearis for Most Improved too...Great Senior season with a beautiful smart race to a runner-up finish at State. Again, it's been a great XC season for NorCal athletes & teams...and we still have FL Nationals next weekend to come...

Anonymous said...

Most Improved - Strangio
Most Impressive Performance - Shyam Kumar @ WCAL 3 joining the all time list on Crystal Springs. He also was close to beating Meika, who is nationally ranked
Most Impressive Team Performance - St. Francis, Mountain View, Boys @ State by getting the lowest score ever:53
MVP - Liam Anderson
Three Amigos - Shyam Kumar, Colton Colonna and Eric Eng

The boys from St. Francis should win a couple because of their extraordinary season: winning state, qualifying for NXN, and finishing 9th in the country.

Anonymous said...

Coach of the year: Tom Ashby, Michael Prutz

Anonymous said...


Most Valuable Runner - Alex Parker (SFS)

Most Impressive Performance- Alex Parker (SFS) at SFS championships

Most Impressive Performance - Lowell Boys sweep at SFS championship

Most Inspirational -Beck Johnstone(SFS)

Most Improved Runner -Beck Johnstone (SFS)

Lifetime Achievement Award - Liam Klaiman (SFS)

Buster Posey (rookie of the year)-Andrew Blelloch (SFS)

Best Robin to Batman (best supporting actor)-Noah Battaglia (SFS)

Best Three Amigos-Alex Parker, Noah Battaglia, Zachary Parker (SFS)

Boys Coach of the Year- Tom Ashby, Michael Prutz (SFS)

Anonymous said...

CCS Picks:

Team: St Francis (not even close)
Three Amigos: SF top 3
Senior: MBR (Kumar is close but Meika killed it at every meet and ran a smart league race when they went head to head)
Junior: Colonna (MacKenzie is close but 15:02 at Crystal is tough to beat. Temp difference a factor in Owen’s :08 state advantage)
Soph: Garcia over Dal Canto on strength of CCS and State head to head wins
Frosh: Murray 16:01 at Crystal

Albert Caruana said...

Feel free to post section nominations as someone did for CCS.

Anonymous said...

CCS awards- Sr: MBR, Jr: Mackenzie, So: Garcia, Fr: Murray
Mackenzie made the Top 20 all-time list at Toro and was faster than Colonna at CCS and State. End of season is what it's all about. Colonna's Crystal time is impressive in perfect conditions and a competitive race. SCVAL was windy and with little depth in the field, it went out slow and strategic for the first two miles. Can't wait to see what Mackenzie and Saul do at Crystal next year.

Strangio for NorCal Most Improved because of his jump to the elite level but based on time improvement, Medearis, Mackenzie and Eng could also be considered.

Anonymous said...

Liam Anderson, Runner of the year!
Section Champ
State Champ
3rd at NXN

Most improved Team: Oakland Tech Girls!

Anonymous said...

@9:33 interesting that you referenced the conditions for the Crystal races but discount the difference in conditions at both CCS and State from the times DI (both earlier and cooler) and DII took the field.

Anonymous said...

Most Inspirational Awards for NORCALs

Mari Friedman (SC/CCS): Top Runner and a great role model (athletically and physically) for female athletes everywhere both in Track and Cross Country.

Robert Miranda (Menlo/CCS): Came back from injury last year and if it wasn't for sudden illness would've finished better at State and potentially NXN/Footlocker. Great role model and student.

Unknown said...

Most impressive team performance on the boy's side is a tricky one; going strictly by times run and the course they were run on, Dublin's performance at the Clovis invite would have to number 1--15:35 average at Woodward, with the top 4 all running 15:37 and only a 14 point loss to Great Oak in one of their best team performances of the year. Obviously, it would be unfair to compare those times to the times Saint Francis ran at state because of the differences in weather, but it's worth noting that Dublin's Clovis team time was also faster than all of the team times in the D1 state race, which did have an insanely tight pack at the beginning of the race but was run in near-ideal conditions. If the award is meant to consider the importance of the meet SF is a clear pick (and especially with only 1 senior, pretty amazing), but if it's purely about the most impressive team performance I think Dublin should come out on top.

Albert Caruana said...

Dublin's performance at Clovis was very impressive and worth mentioning.

Anonymous said...

How about Emily Perez as she has beaten Caroline Garret and is ranked higher than her on Milesplit?

Anonymous said...

How about Emily Perez as she has beaten Caroline Garret and is ranked higher than her on Milesplit?

Anonymous said...

No Collin Ullrich for most improved??? He went from a 16:00 5k guy to 17th at FL nats!

Dan said...

For those that don't know, this was Collin Ullrich's second year of running cross country! Had the pleasure of interviewing him and having several conversations with the young man whose best is still ahead of him. Between his junior and senior year, sought out Michael Vernau and Luis Grijalva to see to train with two of NorCals all time greats. Some college is going to get a great kid. Full disclosure, I have a vote in the NorCal awards and I would nominate both Ullrich and Strangio as SJS runners of the year. Due to different divisions, they didn't run head to head, but surely will at some of the big track invitationals. Their times are ridiculously close in the meets they both ran, outside of state where Collin ran in the last race of the day in the heat. They headed different directions for nationals and both represented the SJS and NorCal amazingly well at NXN and FL respectively. A great year for NorCal XC.

Anonymous said...

There should be an award for the dark horse team. A team that nobody saw coming that ended up doing fairly well throughout the season. I have no idea who that would go too. Saint Francis could take that too but, they were in the rankings before the season. I'm thinking like teams that weren't even in the rankings that ended up placing well at NCS, SJS, CCS, etc.

Anonymous said...

Since St Francis was not even picked to win their league at the start of the season, and others picked them to come up short at both CCS and State, I would assume by winning all three and finishing 9th at NXN would make them a good dark horse candidate. Other teams?

Anonymous said...

I don't know much about NCS or SJS however in CCS some teams that surprised me (to an extent) were Los Altos boys and Carlmont girls. Who could've possibly seen Carlmonts girls team getting 2nd at CCS? Before the season started, I sure didn't. And throughout the whole season, it seemed that Palo Alto and Bellarmine were gonna take the 1 and 2 spots for D1 boys but, in the end, the Los Altos dark horse team got it. Plus Los Altos did fairly well at state.

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