This season the girls Cross Country team saw many veteran runners returning, hungry for a return to the State Meet after narrowly missing the opportunity last year. We had three frosh runners, sophomores Maren Ahonen-Lytal, Olivia Joseph and freshman Camila Terrazas who put in a great summer of running with us, and they really come on well and they were welcomed by the veterans and a strong pack emerged. We spread the girls around the Frosh, JV and Varsity races all season but by the Championship it was clear they were a force to be reckoned with as we came second at Leagues to powerhouse Campolindo.
The three frosh girls, combined with Captains Lucy Leininger and Natasha Cohen, created a strong scoring five, with Abby Seman and Maddie Palmer helping out too. The week prior to NCS saw an atmospheric river of rain fall, and we knew it would be a very muddy race, as much of the NCS course at Hayward High School is in a depression where water drains in and sits. We prepped the runners the day prior by running sprints on a waterlogged soccer field until they were wet through and ‘at one with the mud’ and saw it as both fun and survivable. The day of the race the course seemed to have dried out and with just some light drizzle predicted all the schools were optimistic of reasonable conditions. The forecast shifted dramatically mid morning, and rain fell steadily until the course was mired in deep mud. It was not so much a question of ‘if I fall’ as ‘when I fall’ when the girls were running strides on the starting line. We had the girls go out and warm up in the driving rain instead of shielding them in drier areas until the last minute, so they were well used to the weather and they showed up at the start line ready to race. One of the other reasons the team did well is as a pack its easier to survive awful conditions; you are more motivated by the presence of the team mates, plus your coach yelling ‘You’re In First Place’ makes every thing hurt a little less, as we were getting online updates at the 1 mile and 2 mile splits. Our front runner that day was freshman phenom Camila Terrazas who secured 8th place, followed closely by Junior Natasha Cohen in 13th place, Senior Lucy Leininger in 15th place, sophomore Olivia Joseph in 18th and Maren Ahonen-Lytal in 25th place, as our scoring five. We placed first and discovered our tight pack running meant we had beat out Campolindo and ended their ten year winning streak by a comfortable margin of 25 points. We had gone from ‘can we make top four and get to
state this year?’ to winning our first championship in school history. It was not our finest race in terms of times, but it was a race in which we crumbled a lot less than other schools in extreme racing conditions. Captain Natasha Cohen said, “This was the most incredible season I’ve ever had in sports, and the feeling of knowing we had won at NCS when I had just been hoping to get fourth for the weeks before the race was incredible. I had so much fun running with my teammates who I became so much closer with over this season. I enjoyed watching their improvements and felt more of a team. dynamic than I have ever felt before. The feeling of getting a PR at NCS despite the muddy course and terrible conditions was amazing, and I’ll never forget the feeling of racing as if nothing else even mattered.”
A week of further training followed during the Thanksgiving break, and then we brought a very happy group of girls to the State Meet at Woodward Park in Fresno, where it was a sunny 55f degrees and they were rewarded with almost perfect running conditions, which they took full advantage of to run another school record as it was the fastest team time in school history, with our top five averaging 19:45, and placing 13th out of a field of the best 25 teams in the State.
This year saw a unique combination of a stable group of veterans with experience in racing, who actively welcomed a fast improving group of frosh runners, instead of feeling threatened by them. In some girls’ teams there are hierarchies and younger girls are reluctant to move up and pass the older more established girls. The fluidity in our pack also meant no one girl was burdened with a key role, such as being the no 1 or no 2 girl, each race allowed each athlete to run based on how they felt, with less pressure Muddy by victorious after NCS meet on them to perform as an individual. The strength of this kind of pack is huge psychologically, especially in poor conditions. We had a 47 second spread which is the time difference between your first and fifth runner. No other team went sub one minute in their spread, some had a 5 – 9 minute spread as they had a talented front runner and slower runners behind them. Added to the unique chemistry of the girls was a coaching team that has been stable for many years and able to build upon its prior successes. This was my 13th season and Coach Peter Ceresa, Coach Cody Davis and Coach Steve Pierce have been working with the program now for nearly ten years and that creates a strong reservoir of experience. In the past four years we have qualified five teams to the State Meet, and in the entire 32 years prior there were only 7 teams at the State Meet so the program is definitely enjoying a ‘purple patch’ and finding a lot of success with this team of coaches.
By Ruth Seabrook, Head Coach Cross Country