LCHS cross country keeps up pace at Mt. SAC
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On the boys’ side, Aayush Shah put on a good show for the Spartans, coming in seventh overall for the boys at 16 minutes, 3 seconds, barely edging eighth place finisher Mueen Ghoury of Rubidoux (16:03).
But what kept La Cañada up at the top in the boys’ section was the performance of the back half of the team—no La Cañada runner finished below 77th place of the 146 runners.
“We’ve got one more piece of the puzzle,” said Spartans Head Coach Mike Thatcher, talking about how most of his team was under 17 minutes. “We’ve been crunching a lot of numbers and things are looking good. We’re not quite fast enough to be comfortable to make state finals, but we’re close. I think the guys know it. We’ll need three or four guys to drop a few personal records and I think we’ll be in contention for it. We just have to keep narrowing the spread. When they all get under 16:40, good things are going to happen.
“Adam Skaggs went under 17 minutes and Anton had some real trouble with this course last year—17:08 is a big step for him,” Thatcher said. “Anton is coming on.
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Johnny Wu finished 30th at 16:37 and Andrew Fisher finished 37th at 16:42. Adam Skaggs came in at 48th place (16:51) and Anton Cwik (17:08), Erick Lankey (17:14) and Brendan Green finished in 72nd, 74th and 77th place.
The boys’ team lost Sean Sharma this year to graduation. Sharma is currently running cross country at Willamette University, where he recently placed 44th overall in the Beaver Classic, an annual race among Oregon-based colleges.
The girls’ side as usual was paced by Holly Shreckengast (19:45) and Meghan Fuelling (19:49), once again finishing side by side in seventh and eighth place respectively.
Freshman Sonja Cwik (21:35) was third best for the Spartans at 48th place.
“Our Mt. SAC team time of 1:46:10 needs to get down to 1:42:30 if we even stand a chance of making the finals at CIF,” said La Cañada girls’ coach Andy DiConti. “That was about the same time we had last year but we didn’t advance because we were in a tough heat.
“I know it’s a lot to ask from my girls, but I also know we are capable of hitting that time, even though each girl will have to knock off about :45 seconds from their best this year. Obviously, everything has to be perfect, but that’s what we’ve been aiming towards all year.”