There is no doubt that the Matadors faced their fair share of roadblocks this season, especially with Nathaniel Smauley’s broken foot due to an unfortunate and freak ultimate frisbee accident. However, on Saturday there were tons of Granada athletes who stepped up and performed like champions, including the JV Girls who won their championship race! Congratulations!

The day started with the Boys FS race, featuring the Granada Freshmen Army. That’s right, all of our runner’s in this race were freshmen, ten of them. The top five scorers were Kyle Rosemark, Andrew Cable, Grant Salk, Brandon Weisbrod, and Justin Agness. The team finished in 6th place.

The next race for Granada was the JV Boys race. This race featured sophomores and seniors for us. Senior Darryl Kuhn raced a speedy 12:21 on the 2 mile course and earned JV All-League for his 7th place finish. He was followed closely by fellow senior Alex Graves, 12:29. Eric Alvillar, Per Arnesson, and Cristian Lewczyk completed the top five, followed closely by Stephen and Michael Klem. The team finished in 4th place.

The JV girls were next. Freshman sensation Laura Herbeck took second place, nearly overtaking the winner, a senior from Livermore HS. Laura made a big move down the hill, closing the gap, then had a strong kick to the finish, clocking 13:47. She was followed by freshman Laura Franklin (5th) and senior Ana Cyr (6th). All three made JV All-League. Freshmen Alyssa Horning finished in 8th place and senior Alena Harris completed the top five in 19th. This was a big win over Carondelet. Congratulations again JV girls!

The varsity boys race had a mixed outcome. Senior Drew Callen lead the team in 4th place and earned All-League honors in a Granada course record time of 16:39. Junior Alex Summers finished in a strong 8th place and earned second team honors (16:43). Sophomore Brandon Arnold filled in the hole for Smauley, running 17:24, 20th overall, and 3rd for Granada. The boys finished the regular season in second place, but based on their fourth place finish, there was a three-way tie for second with us losing all the tie breakers and ending the season in 4th place. On a positive note, without Smauley the boys team was only 4 points behind MV.

The varsity girls ran well on Saturday. Senior Hayley Swanson was not feeling well but managed to stay tough and finished in 11th place and earned second team All-League honors. Freshman phenom Carina Novell continued to impress with a 2 minute PR in 20:40 followed a second later by junior Lara Jansen. Senior Grace Todd also broke the 21 minute barrier in 20:47 and finished in 20th place. Sarah Herbeck improved her time by almost 2 minutes and completed the scoring for Granada. The girls team finished 4th in the meet, only 5 points behind Cal and beat a strong team from MV, and finished the season in 5th place.

Full results will be posted soon to the results page. I believe that we had over 30 PRs! Keep watching for a new post next week that will have the team banquet information. Varsity continues to train daily for NCS and State. All teammates are welcome. I will also distribute a winter training guide for track and open-field practice for track begins the day we return from winter break. I’m sure that there will be a large group of runners running every day in November and December.