Brea Invite Captain's Log (BOys)

      Now I don’t mean to start any conspiracies or anything, but I’m simply going to list some “coincidences.” John Root’s previous 3 mile PR was 19:11. At the Brea invite he got 18:55, which is a 5k. Now this is where it gets crazy, if converted into 3 miles, his time would be 18:15. I’ll let you take this moment to get your tinfoil hats on. Now, I’m not implying that John root defies Einstein's theory of relativity, or that he can traverse the fourth dimension. However, this could be an explanation for why John had such an amazing time last Saturday. But if this doesn’t cut it for the skeptics who want “evidence” and “actual facts,” it could be because John Root has been putting in the work. John has consistently been putting in the long miles and pushing himself to new limits on the workouts. And as we can see from the Brea Invite, his efforts are paying him back in full.

        Some outstanding performances were revealed in a week filled with pain and suffering.  Most of Brea’s fros-soph runners ran 2 races in three days and 3 races in a span of one week.  This is definitely not an easy thing to do.  Though as expected, Brea’s young frosh-soph team had no problem.  Starting with League Prelims, Shane Gaffikin and Matthew Apahidean had outstanding performances taking 2nd and 3rd place in their race.  Following them was sophomore Noah Tamagno who took 7th place respectively.  Jacob Woody and Mason Harding placed 15th and 16th securing 1st place for the boys fros-soph team.  Most impressive was the pack running the young team displayed.  Nicolas Orozco, Carlos Perez, and Ryan Daedler all came within a few seconds of each other.  Incorporating pack running into a race is a difficult thing to do but can be taken advantage of if used efficiently.  While League Prelims went extremely well, the Brea Invite was also full of excitement.  In the frosh-soph 3-5 race, Noah Tamagno took the win, while Jack Hanum placed 3rd in a quest for the team win.  Noah Tamagno came within 4 seconds of his time at League Prelims.  This is a super impressive feat considering the Brea Invite is not only a slower course, but also a longer one.  Mason Harding and Carlos Perez mirrored Noah and Jack in the 6-7 race.  Mason placed 1st and Carlos, who PR’d at the Brea Invite, took 3rd place.  Running a PR at the Brea Invite after already running a race 2 days earlier bodes well for future races.  In that same race, John Root, Ryan Daedler, and Tyler Belknap packed up and finished within seconds of each other to conclude a great weekend.  The frosh-soph team had no problem securing the win at the Brea Invite with hopefully many more to come.

      Thursday was a hot day in Irvine and yet the varsity boys still seemed to be the only thing that was blazing. The Century Conference Prelims holds a race for one of the best leagues in the state. Even though this was the case, the varsity boys managed to show the rest of the league why we are as good as we are. Gio Orellana and Daniel Perez managed to hang with the leaders for most of the race and both ended up running 2nd place and 3rd place respectively. Meanwhile, John Dempsey, Jon Tobin, Tyler Spicer, and Kevin McNulty all ran as a pack for most of the race and all managed to be under 16:00. Drew Apahidean who ran a time of 16:09, and Tommy Valenti, who ran 16:32 also ran in the varsity race and managed to grit out fast times despite the heat. All of this made way to our team going 2-3-7-9-10-11-14-26 with finishing score of 31, 23 points ahead of the next team.

      If you didn’t notice, one of our varsity members did not race that day and instead opted to run Saturday at Brea Invite. Caleb Myers, along with Gio Orellana, Daniel Perez, Drew Apahidean, Tommy Valenti, and Nolan Orozco all ran in the varsity races on Saturday and managed placing 2nd, even though we sat half of our varsity squad to Valencia, one of top teams in southern section. Gio and Caleb in the 1-2 race and placed 3rd and 5th behind 3 of the best runners in southern section. In the 3-4-5 race, Daniel Perez cruised to a big victory and Drew and Tommy were not too far off placing big times for our team time. Lastly, Nolan grinded out a tough race in the 6-7+ race and showed that even though it wasn’t his best performance, he stilled showed great perseverance. The team, sadly, lost a close one to Valencia by a total of 2 seconds and did not come away with the team title. However, things look good for the upcoming Orange County Champs in which everything it takes will be needed to beat Dana Hills in a tough race.

Brought to you by John Dempsey, Daniel Perez, and Dylan Perlson.

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