Race Recap: League Preview and Brea

Back to back races challenged the Spartans this week, with league preview at Irvine park on Thursday and the Carbon Canyon Invitational this past Saturday. Carbon Canyon Invitational proved to be a grueling race with the switch backs at mile 2 and a clocked overall distance courtesy of Jacob Ward, at 3.18 miles. Regardless of the challenges that faced the Spartans, the Carbon Canyon Invitational proved to be a successful race overall. It proved that even with back to back races, we can still succeed with the girls varsity taking third out of 17 schools and Villa Park taking home approximately 20 individual medals.

Stand out performances came from Kim Haefele who took first place again overall in the girls varsity race with a time of 19:28 and Reagan Peterson who took seventh place overall with a time of 20:44. Other stand out performances were freshman Amy Gitmed who worked her way substantially up the pack after the first mile, along with Emma Harness and Megan Lindenmuth who both finished strong with only a second between each other.

Arturo Ochoa led the boys varsity with a strong race finishing with a time of 17:57 along with Chris Bui and Ricardo Ochoa finishing only eight seconds between each other with times of 18:31 and 18:21. Andrew Hembree and Spencer Stevens also finished together with a time of 19:37 while Kevin Pino performed with a time of 19:28 on a longer course, proving he will be able to bring his time down at OC Champs October 17th.

The team was great about cheering when the runners were close to the Villa Park tent, yet we expect everyone to be out on the course supporting one another especially if you have already ran your race. During the girls varsity race, I witnessed another school being rude to one of our runners during their race. This is why it is important that we are all out on the course positively supporting ALL runners and representing Villa Park in a positive manner and to the standards that we as coaches expect from all athletes. Overall, having two races so close to one another, everyone did a great job rising to the challenge and out of the athletes that raced, 42% of them took home medals. Great job Villa Park!!