Three-peat

The weather was hot and dry at Saturday's CIF Finals at Mt. SAC but success rained down on the Brea-Olinda High School cross-country program. Senior Austin Tamagno followed the advice of Teddy Roosevelt and spoke softly, carried a big stick and went far (quickly). Tamagno successfully defended his CIF title, led the way for a three-peat with our third consecutive team title and 4th CIF team title in the past 5 years. 

Tamagno executed his race plan to perfection by staying with the leaders through the first mile and then slowly dropped the pace. When he reached the bottom of "Poop out" he was 4 seconds clear of the field. Tamagno came through the 2 mile in 10:00 and was able to cover the last .95 mile in 4:50 to inscribe his name in record books one more time. The next BOHS athlete to cross the line was Gio Orellana with a 9 second improvement over his time at the Mt. SAC invite earlier this season; both Tamagno and Orellana earned First Team All CIF honors.

Brea-Olinda was able to win our 3rd consecutive team title by 18 points, 13 of those points were the result of a late race move from sophomore sensation Kevin McNulty. After passing the half-way mark in 26th place McNulty was able to dig deep and pass half of the field that was in front of him by the finish. Team captain Joe Tobin was able to hold off his younger brother Jon despite Jon's ability to match McNulty's late race move where Jon also passed 13 runners over the second half of the race. "No H", or Young Tobin, as we call him, was sitting at the back of a large pack with 3/4 of a mile to go and he was able to dispatch the group likely securing the team title. Our third sophomore to dawn the Brea jersey at the 2015 championship race was John Dempsey who was able to shave 10 seconds off his Mt. SAC best.
Our number seven man is a person you should all know and you will be better off having him know you. A true testament to hard work, Junior Drew Apahidean's interminable desire to improve started 12 months ago and his doggedness paid dividends. In August Apahidean finished 13th at the Mattern Run (formerly the Alumni Run) and would have likely finished 14th had Daniel Perez been in town that day; after reviewing his training log a last minute invite to Mammoth was extend. Drew is also one of a very small number of athletes that completed the 100 Days of Glory and his toil reaped great rewards in 2015. Drew's first race as a Wildcat was at the Great Cow run in 2013 where he crossed the line in 20:43. By the end of 2013 his PR landed at 19:20. His sophomore year Apahidean improved his PR to 18:49 at League Finals but he was just getting started. 365 days later at League Finals Apahidean finished as the 8th Wildcat in 16:06 and was called up to race in the place of an injured athlete at CIF Prelims. Drew was asked to race at CIF Finals for another injured athlete and now has a CIF team title to his name. Drew's time at Mt. SAC his freshman year was 20:36, he crossed the line at CIF Finals in 17:11 or 3:15 faster than two year ago. 

Going into the State Meet this Saturday we look to race a full squad by fielding juniors Daniel Perez and Caleb Myers. As always the goal is to putout the best possible effort and accept the results before the gun is fired. 

The ladies punched their ticket to State for the first time since 2006. The write up will come tomorrow (it's getting late).