Prep League Finals: Flintridge Prep & Mayfield Confirm Their Status

Flintridge Prep - Boys Champs

This highly competitive small school league came into their finals at Pierce College with the SGV #9 Flintridge Prep boys looking to maintain their dominance and the girls from SGV #2 Mayfield looking to confirm their top spot for the first time since 2008.  Both teams were more than up to the task on one the best days in the PL’s history at this hilly 3-mile course, with Sam Cartwright of Chadwick and Evan Gancedo of Pasadena Poly taking the individual honors.

Here’s the breakdown from Poly coach Rick Caragher:

Sam Cartwright, Boys Champ

Flintridge Prep, for the 19th time in the last 20 years, won the varsity boys league title.  The Rebels staved off a strong challenge from the Dolphins of Chadwick, 29-37, their 81:44 was the Prep League’s #4 team time in our 8 years of running league finals at Pierce.  Chadwick (82:34) ran the league’s #7 all-time team time.  Flintridge Prep was led by senior Casey Thompson 3rd/16:11 and sealed the victory with a 5, 6, 7, 8 finish capped by Golden Anchor, Jake Johnson 8th/16:30.

In the boys’ race for the individual champion, Sam Cartwright (see photo) of Chadwick, Michael Caughron (Poly) and Prep’s  Thompson waged a back and forth race for the first two miles.  At that point Cartwright and Caughron broke away, trading the lead until Cartwright utilized his 4:22 miler’s speed in the last 200 meters to out-kick the Poly runner.  They finished 15:43 and 15:45 respectively, the league’s 3rd and 4th fastest all-time individual performances.

Flintridge Prep and Chadwick advance to CIF on place, while Poly advances as an at-large team through their CIF ranking.  Webb, led by Marcos Lopez 18th/17:35, was fourth here at 89:11, and will hope that is good enough to return to the rankings this week to earn an at-large ranking.  Looking to the future, the Flintridge JV boys won the meet with a perfect score of 15 and shattered the previous JV team time record.

Mayfield- Girls Champs

Mayfield, coming off strong performances at Stanford, Clovis and Mt SAC, continued their dominating ways by defeating a strong field in the girls race. The Cubs, paced by Alyssa Rivas 2nd/18:56 (5th Prep League All Time on this course), put all five scorers in the top 10, with Mary Najarian‘s 10th/20:21 finish capping a new PL team time record (96:46) and a new mark for the largest margin of victory (25 points) in the league’s eight year history at Pierce.  Joining Mayfield and Chadwick in the post-season will be CIF-SS top six ranked teams, Poly (3rd-80 points) and Flintridge Prep (4th-91 points).

Evan Gancedo - Girls Champ

The girls race boiled down to Sarah Yoho (Flintridge Prep), Evan Gancedo (Poly) and the lead trio trio from Mayfield with Yoho controlling the pace through the first two miles.  On the second to last uphill, before a long descent, Poly’s Gancedo pushed the pace to open up a lead that she build to 13 seconds by the end.  A sophomore, Gancedo’s championship winning 18:43 was the league’s #2 all-time individual performance.  In addition to Gancedo and second-placed Rivas, Coley Mozilo of Mayfield 3rd/18:56 – #6 all-time, and Yoho 4th/19:00 – #8 on the all-time list, ran extremely well.

Among the other SGV schools, Vivian Webb was 5th, with Ariana Habbestad 12th/20:23 as their leader.  Dylan Jack 17th/21:03 was up front for sixth-place Westridge.  Mayfield’s jv girls, matching the feat by the Flintridge jv boys, also scored a perfect 15 in winning their jv race.

Photos courtesy of Robert Caughron.

Complete Results are here: Prep League XC 2011 Championship Results

Leave a Reply

You can use these HTML tags

<a href="" title=""> <abbr title=""> <acronym title=""> <b> <blockquote cite=""> <cite> <code> <del datetime=""> <em> <i> <q cite=""> <s> <strike> <strong>

  

  

  

SGV Track & XC

This site is maintained by Bob Ramsey – a SGV T&F athlete (Arroyo ’80), and former coach at Glendora HS and Meet Director of the SGV Champs. Bob is currently Director of Track & Field and Cross Country at Whittier College