It’s easy to set a high goal but far more difficult to attain
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Morgan Hill – It’s easy to set a high goal but far more difficult to attain it.
The Sobrato High cross country teams are definitely doing their part to make their goal of reaching the CIF State championships a reality.
Competing at the Pacific Grove Invitational on Saturday, the Bulldogs boys and girls teams became the talk of the meet with first-place finishes in the small school division.
That wasn’t all though. Not only did the third-year school beat out all the small school division teams, but their scores also were enough to beat out all of the large school divsion teams. The girls junior varsity team also took first place.
“They only recognized us as winning the small school division,” said freshman Alan Rios, who finished sixth overall with a time of 13:40 on the 2.35-mile course. “But realistically we just killed every school that was there.”
“They didn’t even clap up for us,” Kirsten Kuwatani added.
The team members are used to not being recognized by other competitors and commonly hear their school’s name mispronounced and are asked where they are from. That is, until they see them race.
“After the race, they know where we’re from,” said sophomore Amber Masoni, who was one of four Bulldogs runners to finish in the top-10 overall with her time of 16:10.
At the beginning of the season, Sobrato made qualifying for the state meet its top goal, and some thought it might be a bit of a lofty one.
“We always told ourselves we were going to state, but some people didn’t really believe it,” Rios said.
Now the whole team is believing it.
“We’re a lot closer than we thought,” said sophomore Lance Wolfsmith, who set a new course record at Pacific Grove with his time of 12:30. “We’ve gone up against the top teams in (the Central Coast Section) about three times and we’re right there with them. We’re excited to see how well we can do at CCS.”
At the Stanford Invitational two weeks ago, the Sobrato girls team finished third among Division IV CCS teams, finishing behind only Carmel and Harbor. With the top four teams at the CCS meet qualifying for the state meet, the Bulldogs are right on track.
The boys team took fifth among Division IV CCS teams at Stanford, but was only two points behind Harbor and three points behind Santa Cruz despite missing one of its top runners. That has the team feeling confident and ready.
“We’re on schedule for having a really good CCS meet leading up to state,” Rios said.
With the CCS finals now less than a month away, the performance at Pacific Grove came at a perfect time to serve as a boost of confidence and helped give some runners a good opportunity to experience success.
“It was good practice for us, because a lot of us don’t know what it’s like to be holding a strong spot in a race,” Masoni said.
For Wolfsmith, a strong personal performance was important as he had begun to hit a bit of a slump.
“That’s actually a really good confidence booster,” he said. “I started the season off really good, but then for some reason I wasn’t putting out. It’s nice to get another win to boost my confidence.”
Besides their success in invitational meets, Sobrato is rolling through the Blossom Valley Athletic League’s West Valley Division.
After beating San Jose and Prospect on Wednesday, the Bulldogs are 6-0.
“We’re undefeated and that even motivates us even more,” junior Abhi Devaraj said. “We’re definitely shooting to win the league and go to CCS and the ultimate goal is to go to state.”
With league competitions taking place on Wednesdays and invitationals meets typically on Friday or Saturday, the runners conserve their energy a bit and run in a pack during league meets, going fast enough to win the race, but not enough to wear them down for the weekend meets.
It all seems to be working for Sobrato and the Bulldogs seemed poised for success not only at the BVAL level, but at the CCS and hopefully state level as well.
Jimmy Durkin is the Morgan Hill Times sports editor. Reach him at (408) 779-4106 ext. 203 or jd*****@*************es.com.
