Staub – Barnes Invitational

La Crescenta Park September October 4, 2008

This was our first race of the year on the La Crescenta course, one that is both challenging and longer (5K) than most. We will run it again on October 22 in our home meet against Notre Dame, St Francis, and Flintridge Sacred Heart. Conditions were ideal with temperatures in the 60s and even some mist and light rain falling later in the morning. The invitational races that are a big part of our mid-season program are a chance for our team to get experience. This is especially important for younger runners and therefore the focus of this wrap-up will be on them; those who are the future of the team.

Girls: In the varsity race, tenth grader Lily Einstein led the team at 21:54, followed by Caroline Cuse (12), Claudine Yee (11), and Bridget Golub (11). Despite the longer course, Gina Benedicto (11) took 35 seconds off her years’ best to finish at 22:24. Mary Rose Fissinger ran her best race of the year at 25:53. Melissa Flores, who has been improving with every race, lopped another 42 seconds off to finish at 26:16. Danni Xia (9) dropped under 30 minutes for the first time with a 29:09, Ingrid Chang (29:53) dropped 37 seconds and at 30:24, Thalia Bajakian (11) took off 1:26 to finish at 30:24. Great progress!

Boys: The varsity team was without its seniors who were at home taking the SATs wishing, as one boy put it Monday morning, that they were running instead. This was therefore a great opportunity to enter most of our runners in the sophomore and freshman divisions. Sophomores David Abergel and Kevin On opted to run in the varsity open division, and both medaled (4^th and 6^th place overall) with personal best times on the La Crescenta course in the low 17:00 range. Junior Elijah Lowenstein, currently our key fifth man, narrowed the gap between him and Abergel to just over a minute.

Our sophomores placed three runners in the top 16 in their race, with Hank Adelmann, Charlie Stigler, and Ben Saunders all posting sub-19:00 times, excellent for this time of year. Alex Leichenger, although new to the sport this fall, ran 22:36.

In the last and most exciting race of the day, our freshmen boys gave us a glimpse of their future role on the team, posting an aggregate team time of 1:48:54 (total for runners 1-5) to finish third in their division. Aaron de Toledo (18:52 and Judd Liebman (19:10) finished 4^th and 5^th in the race, followed by Will Tobias (20:53), Graham Cairns (22:26), Hunter Price (22:34), Julian Lopez (23:54), and Jake Chapman (24:08). The future looks bright!