Foursomes out to turn heads Friday in Top 8 Classic; Bulldogs
sweep Acorns in final Santa Teresa Division dual meets
MORGAN HILL
Jacob Montoya was bound and determined to answer the question no matter how rhetorical it was.
The senior was relaxing with Live Oak High School teammates James Walker, Jacob Daw, Stephan Saade and Adam Groen on the infield grass during Thursday’s track and field meet against Sobrato when he was reminded of how gifted the LOHS boys are in the 400- and 1,600-meter relays this spring.
They’re ranked pretty high in the section this year, huh?
“Are we?” Montoya responded, turning all attention away from the 400 meters he was slated to run in the next three minutes. Montoya shaded his eyes and peered up at the Richert Field press box where Kean Vaziry, the frontman of Live Oak’s 4×100, was watching results as they came in.
“Hey, Kean! What are we ranked right now?”
“Top 15!” Vaziry yelled back.
“No,” Montoya responded quietly to himself. “We’re better than that.”
A moment passed. Then Groen chimed in with an answer that brought laughter back to the group. He is a bespectacled distance runner who looks like he’s good with numbers.
“It’s OK to just say you’re No. 1 in our hearts.”
Alas Montoya and his relay cohorts don’t need rankings to know they have what it takes to run with the top foursomes in the May 27 Central Coast Section Finals. They have known for some time.
The Acorns returned two starters from their 4×100 and 4×400 relay teams that were poised to set school records and qualify for the 2010 CCS Semifinals before both were disqualified in Blossom Valley Athletic League Finals. One dropped a baton. The other had a runner step out of his lane.
Friday they can earn an ounce of redemption in the CCS Top 8 Track Classic, an elite midseason showcase at Los Gatos High School.
Last week, Alex Hafenbacker, Daw, Walker and Montoya were listed eighth in the CCS with a season-best time of three minutes, 32.47 seconds in the 4×400, while Vaziry, Daw, Walker and T.J. Ornduff were ninth at 44.14 in the 4×100.
Saade ran anchor in place of Ornduff on Thursday but said he is “just keeping T.J.’s seat warm” until Ornduff recovers from a minor back injury. With Saade, the Acorns’ 4×100 took first in 44.4.
“I was really excited about the 4x(400) this year. The 4x(100) has been sort of a pleasant surprise,” LOHS distance coach Mike Sullivan said. “We lost two of our fastest runners. Then James Walker came out. And Kean has done just an excellent job with the starting role out of the blocks.
“They’ve come around a lot faster than I expected.”
Live Oak’s records in the 4×100 (43.89) and 4×400 (3:24.9) are once again in danger of falling, though, it is of little cause for excitement to the relay members. Four of whom — Vaziry, Hafenbacker, Walker, Daw — set the all-time LOHS mark (1:37.63) in the 800-meter sprint medley relay April 2 in the St. Francis Invite. That record was previously held by Vaziry, Daw, Montoya and Ornduff, who clocked 1:37 in the March 3 Garlic Classic.
“It feels good to set a school record, but it’s not like a personal thing,” Walker said. “It just feels good to have your name in the record book somewhere. We’re mainly focused on making CCS.”
Along with camaraderie, however, there does exist a healthy competitive rivalry between the relaymates, especially Daw and Walker, Sullivan said. That was plain to see in the St. Francis Invite, where Daw ran a personal-record 50.88 in his leg of the sprint medley relay only to watch Walker clock the exact same time in the 4×400.
Daw and Walker went head to head at 100 meters Thursday with Walker winning in 10.9. Daw (11.1) followed in third behind Sobrato’s Obi Mbonu (11.0).
“The only reason Jacob is going in the 100 is so he can compete with James,” Sullivan said. “It’s great to have that, talented athletes who push each other and work as a team.”
Daw, already a CCS title contender in high jump, wants to compete in all three of his events — and possible the open 400 — in section finals.
“It’d be a busy meet,” he said. “But I’ll be just fine with it.”
Winston van Keulen no longer has buyer’s remorse for the Nike track spikes he purchased this offseason per the advice of his former Sobrato teammate Lance Wolfsmith, who now competes for the Air Force Academy.
Van Keulen loves everything about them except for the color: neon orange.
“They didn’t look that orange online, and that’s the only color they came in,” he said somewhat dejectedly. “It was kind of a surprise when I opened the box.”
The shoes at least have grown on to the rest of the SHS distance runners who think of van Keulen, the group’s lone senior and fastest personal-record holder, as a beacon to chase at 1,600 and 3,200 meters.
Thursday it was sophomore Ryan Corvese who tailed van Keulen until the final lap in the mile race at breezy Richert Field. That’s when Corvese took over the lead for good, holding of Live Oak freshman Kalem Bergstrom through an exciting final stretch to win in 4:43. Bergstrom crossed the finish line a second later, and van Keulen (4:48) followed in third.
Corvese did “exactly what he was supposed to do,” according to van Keulen.
“Winston took the wind the whole race and really helped me kick it in,” said Corvese, who was a second off his PR. “I think we had a good race on the whole, considering the headwind today. It’s a big confidence boost when we can all do well as a group in conditions like this.”
Sobrato sophomore Newton Nguyen added: “We just have to keep on Winston.”
Bergstrom, a promising talent, edged van Keulen by one second to take first in the 3,200, but the Bulldogs’ superior depth in distance events undercut the victory and ultimately helped the Sobrato boys win the rivalry dual meet by an unofficial score of 71-65.
On the girls side, the Bulldogs won 90-35 approximately to complete a program-best finish (6-1) in the Santa Teresa Division.
Although the SHS boys distance/cross country team is slower than in past years, when the group produced back-to-back NCAA Division I signees in Wolfsmith (2009, Air force) and Alan Rios (2010, UCLA), that unit is bound to reload behind up-and-coming runners like Corvese and freshman Cody Hulme, who has clocked 4:57.71 in the mile this year.
Both seem fit to don the orange shoes next year.
“I don’t know if we’ll be able to make it to (sectionals) this year, but those two might,” van Keulen said. “It’d be so good for Ryan and Cody to get a taste of it and keep pushing and building off of this year. I wouldn’t be surprised to see a bunch of them go far in the coming years.”
NOTES: The CCS Top 8 is scheduled to begin at 3 p.m. … Sobrato qualifiers include pole vaulters Austin Meldrum, Brandon Mancini and Patrick Reid, currently ranked sixth, 12th and 20th in the section; van Keulen as the first alternate at 3,200 meters, and the 4×100 relay of Kate van Keulen, Cybil Pace, Cassandra Valenzuela and Marissa Benjamin, who also qualified in the open 400. Jaclyn Periera is first alternate in long jump.
