05.02.08
Posted in Back in the Day, Schools, Athletes, Kern Track Results, Foothill, Rankings, Track, Noise Flash!!! at 4:55 pm by Administrator
8:49.4 Peter Romero, Reedley ‘67
8:52.1 Felix Elieff, Highland- Bakersfield ‘77
8:53.66a Kyle Alcorn, Buchanan-Clovis ‘03
8:54.85a Billy Nelson, Taft ‘02
8:59.04a +Fernando Cabada, Buchanan-Clovis ’99
8:59.2 Eddie Granillo, East-Bakersfield ‘70
8:59.81a Mikel Thomas, Clovis ‘06
9:00.0 +Kasto Lopez , Sanger ‘70
9:00.7 +Juan Garcia, Redwood-Visalia ’74
9:01.45a +Chris Schwartz, Foothill-Bakersfield ’08
And #6 Junior all time
8:58.78a Kyle Alcorn, Buchanan ‘02
8:59.04a Fernando Cabada, Buchanan ‘99
8:59.81a Mikel Thomas, Clovis ‘06
9:00.0 Kasto Lopez, Sanger ‘70
9:00.8 Juan Garcia, Redwood ‘74
9:01.45a +Chris Schwartz, Foothill-Bakersfield ‘08
9:01.6 Peter Romero, Reedley ‘68
9:03.83a David Naranjo, Sanger ‘85
9:05.52a Kevin Davis, Clovis West ‘01
9:07.99a Scott Cole, Yosemite ‘87
9:08.4 Juan Chavira, Hanford ‘91
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12.28.07
Posted in Yada Yada, Kern XC Results, Profiles, Back in the Day, Coaches, Athletes, Schools, Athletes, McFarland, Foothill, Runner of the Year, Photos, Rankings, Cross Country, Coach of the Year at 11:16 am by Administrator
Runner of the Year: Chris Schwartz
Foothill, junior
First Kern County runner to win Division I state cross country title.
Placed first in 12 straight meets from Sept. 26 through the Nov. 24 state meet
One of only 15 juniors in the nation to qualify for the Foot Locker National Cross Country Championships in San Diego
Alfonso Cisneros
McFarland, junior
Finished second in Kern County, third in the Central Section and sixth at the Mount San Antonio College Invitational
Placed second in Southwest Sierra League
Cody Gragg
North, senior
Took home titles at Wolfpack Invitational, McLane Invitational and Golden West Invitational before winning Southwest Yosemite League
Ran 16:00 in Central Section meet, qualifying for the state meet
Jesus Gomez
McFarland, senior
Finished sixth in Kern County, third in Southwest Sierra League and 10th in Central Section Division IV finals
Placed sixth in Central Section individual meet to advance to state
Oscar Fuentes
East, junior
Second in Southeast Yosemite League in 16:08
Second in Central Section in 16:39
Ran 17:09 at state meet in Div. II
photo album HERE
boys runner of the year 1984-2006
Coach of the Year: Amador Ayon, McFarland
Ayon guided McFarland to its 17th straight Central Section title (20th overall) and a third-place Division IV finish at the state meet.
Ayon said the key to McFarland’s success was a hard-working group of runners.
“The highlight of the season was the whole season. Every single day was enjoyable to me,” Ayon said. “These kids were there every day. My assistant coaches were incredible.”
McFarland placed five runners in the top 10 at the Central Section Div. IV meet. Earlier in the season, McFarland cruised to the title at the Kern County Championships against county schools of all sizes by placing six runners in the top 9.
McFarland had only one senior on this year’s team, No. 1 runner Jesus Gomez, and a solid crop of prospects are in the local junior high. “The cupboard is not bare by any stretch of the imagination,” Ayon said.
boys coach of the year 1987 to 2006
Second team All-Area
Eddie Garcia, McFarland
Arturo Ramirez, Centennial
Angel Moreno, Highland
Talon Reed, Liberty
Gerardo Alcala, McFarland
Marco Perez, McFarland
Honorable mention
Burroughs: Caleb Rosales
Bakersfield: Andrew Ariey
Centennial: James Diller
Frontier: Michael Golich
Garces: Conner O’Malley
Golden Valley: Robert Quintero
Highland: Colin Lewis, Andrew McCay, Thomas Tuner, Jake Van Zandt
McFarland: Eddie Bautista, Marco Camargo, Jose Gomez, Francisco Nava
Ridgeview: Robby Baker
Shafter: Joshua Wittenberg
Stockdale: Michael Bernaba
Tehachapi: Chris Sanchez
West: Tesfa Habebo
Wasco: Asencion Mendoza
Schwartz stepped up on big stage
BY JEFF EVANS, Californian staff writer
e-mail: jevans@bakersfield.com | Thursday, Dec 27 2007 8:30 PM
Last Updated: Thursday, Dec 27 2007 8:35 PM
Chris Schwartz was the first Kern County runner to win a Division I state cross country championship in the 21-year history of the state meet, and that wasn’t even Schwartz’s biggest highlight of the season.
Photos:
Photo by Casey Christie / The Californian
Foothill High’s Chris Schwartz, right, outsprints, Trabucco Hills’ Riley Sullivan near the finish line in Fresno, during the state championship cross country match. Schwartz took first and Sullivan came in second.
“Going to the nationals was my highlight,” said Schwartz, a junior at Foothill High School who is The Californian’s All-Area Boys Cross Country Runner of the Year.
“And I had my worst day ever at the nationals,” Schwartz added, referring to his 37th-place finish at San Diego’s Balboa Park in early December at the Foot Locker Cross Country Championships.
But Schwartz, 17, already had an outstanding season prior to that meet.
He was the dominant Kern County runner all season, including easy wins at the Kern County Championships and the Southeast Yosemite League meet.
Schwartz captured the Division I Central Section championship at Woodward Park, clocking 15 minutes, 31 seconds over the 5-kilometer course.
The state meet followed two weeks later.
With all eyes focused on co-favorites Riley Sullivan from Mission Viejo-Trabuco Hills and Brett Walters from Hesperia-Sultana, Schwartz used a late-race kick to pull ahead and win the race in 15:13, one second faster than Sullivan and eight seconds faster than third-place finisher Walters.
“I was planning to finish in the top-5, and I won,” Schwartz said.
The state meet marked the 12th straight race Schwartz had won, dating to a Sept. 26 triangular meet at Foothill.
Schwartz credited maturity and advice from Foothill track assistant coach Paul Contreras as the catalysts for his special cross country season.
“My track coach from last year (Contreras) helped me with pacing,” Schwartz said. “I couldn’t have done it without pacing.”
Schwartz, a state track meet qualifier last spring in the 3,200 meters, said he’s a stronger cross country runner.
“The further the distances, I’m much better,” he said. “I can’t outrun people. I’m more of a long-distance runner.”
Schwartz calls the late Steve Prefontaine, one of America’s greatest distance runners, as an idol who keeps him motivated, even though Prefontaine died in a 1975 automobile accident, many years before Schwartz was born.
“I know he died before I was born, but I want to catch his time,” Schwartz said.
Schwartz placed seventh at the West Regionals following the state meet, which qualified him for the Foot Locker national championships in San Diego. He was one of 40 of the top runners in the nation invited to the meet.
At the regionals, he out-kicked Sullivan again, “just like the state meet,” Schwartz said, and was the second-fastest runner from California.
He said he was one of only seven juniors at the Foot Locker meet.
“I was kind of surprised to make it,” Schwartz said. “I was the only junior making it from the Western Region.”
Schwartz is already planning to run in the Foot Locker meet next season.
“Next year I won’t be as nervous and I’ll know the course more. And most of the kids who will be coming will be running it the first time, or I ran against them this year.”
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12.27.07
Posted in Yada Yada, Back in the Day, Results, Athletes, Sports, History, DyeStatCal at 8:28 pm by Administrator
High School Track 2008
Jack Shepard’s High School Track & Field!
ATTENTION PREP TRACK FANS!
The 50th Edition of Jack Shepard’s indispensable reference book
High School Track 2008
is now available.
All-time lists - 2007 performance list - all records (national, class and age)
i bought mine and so should you HERE
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12.19.07
Posted in Back in the Day, Running 101, Athletes, History at 7:09 am by Administrator
Modest pioneer of long-distance running
By Matt Schudel
Washington Post
December 18, 2007
Ted Corbitt, a distance runner who introduced ultramarathon races to the United States and was a quiet, inspirational force in his sport for decades, has died. He was 88.
Corbitt died of respiratory failure Dec. 12 at a Houston hospital. He also had prostate and colon cancer.
A resident of New York, Corbitt competed in the marathon in the 1952 Olympic Games but made his greatest mark by organizing running groups, pioneering the ultramarathon and developing accurate methods of measuring long-distance races.
As one of the few elite African American distance runners of his time, Corbitt encountered discrimination on the track and off, but he forged ahead with a stoic determination that earned the respect of generations of runners.
While supporting himself as a physical therapist, he spent much of his time in training, often running as many as 200 miles a week.
He worked with many running groups, including the organization behind the New York City Marathon. After helping design the course for the inaugural New York event in 1970, Corbitt, then 51, finished fifth in the race. His time of 2 hours, 44 minutes and 15 seconds was seven minutes faster than his mark in the Olympics 18 years earlier.
“He’s sort of the grandfather of our sport,” Bill Rodgers, a four-time winner of the New York and Boston marathons, said in a telephone interview. “He kicked off the modern running boom in America.”
In 1959, Corbitt organized the country’s first ultramarathon, a 30-mile race through New York and its suburbs that pushed beyond the marathon’s 26-mile, 385-yard limit. (Similar races had been run in Europe since Victorian times.)
Corbitt won that 1959 race and went on to compete in 50- and 100-mile runs, as well as grueling events in which he ran for 24 hours without stopping.
During his career, he competed in 199 marathon or ultramarathon races.
The New York Times called him “the patron saint of the ultramarathon in America.”
Although he was not a coach and seldom appeared in the media, Corbitt helped popularize his sport as president of the Road Runners Club of America, which he helped found in 1958, and the New York Road Runners Club.
In the 1960s, he was at the forefront of the important but tedious task of accurately measuring the distances of running routes. He helped develop a technique that employed a calibrated bicycle wheel with a counter that recorded each revolution of the wheel.
“Long-distance runners have to be very strange people,” Corbitt once said of his lonely passion. “You have to really want to do it. You don’t have to win or beat someone, you just have to get through the thing. That’s the sense of victory. The sense of self-worth.”
Corbitt was born in Dunbarton, S.C., on Jan. 31, 1919. He was a track star at the University of Cincinnati, where he received a bachelor’s degree.
Because he was African American, he was sometimes not allowed to compete in meets in the South and Midwest.
He served in the Army during World War II and received a master’s degree in physical therapy at New York University in 1950. He spent many years as chief physical therapist at the International Center for the Disabled in New York and taught physical therapy at Columbia University and NYU.
He often ran to his office from his home, sometimes completing the 31-mile circuit around the island of Manhattan on the way. He estimated that he had been stopped more than 200 times by police, who were not accustomed to seeing a black man running through the streets of New York.
Corbitt lamented his poor showing in the 1952 Olympics, when he finished 44th in the marathon, but he went on to hold the U.S. records for the 25-, 40- and 50-mile runs.
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09.04.07
Posted in Profiles, Back in the Day, Athletes, Schools, Athletes, College, Stockdale at 6:59 am by Administrator
Former Stockdale cross country and track standout now running at South Carolina remains positive as she battles bad injuries
Batch Data Processor | Monday, Sep 3 2007 9:40 PM
Last Updated: Monday, Sep 3 2007 9:46 PM
Alyse Shayer lettered in cross country and track each year at Stockdale High School. She advanced to the state cross country meet as a freshman and qualified for the state track meet all four years, the 4×400 relay she was a member of finishing sixth in her freshman campaign.
Photos:
Photo by Jason Ayer / Special to the Californian
Former Stockdale cross country and track standout Alyse Shayer runs for South Carolina at a cross country meet in the fall of 2005. Read the rest of this entry »
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08.07.07
Posted in Yada Yada, Back in the Day, Athletes, Sports, College, Drillers, Education at 9:43 am by Administrator
Q and A with Bryanna Ojeda
Ex-BHS standout preparing for sophomore season at UC Santa Barbara
Batch Data Processor | Monday, Aug 6 2007 11:45 PM
Last Updated: Monday, Aug 6 2007 11:50 PM
Demons. Most athletes know what it’s like to face those inner voices.
Photos:
Photo by John Harte / The Californian
Former Bakersfield High tennis standout Bryanna Ojeda has finished her first year at UC Santa Barbara.
Former Bakersfield High School girls tennis standout Bryanna Ojeda calls them her “mentality” when she’s on the court. Despite her high school success, she still faces the challenges of chasing perfection and overcoming self-doubt.
Read the rest of this entry »
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07.21.07
Posted in Yada Yada, Profiles, Driller of the Week, Back in the Day, Athletes, Boys, Athletes, Sports, College, Drillers, History, Drillers at 7:06 am by Administrator
Ex-Driller to be enshrined into Hall of Fame
Batch Data Processor | Friday, Jul 20 2007 11:35 PM
Last Updated: Friday, Jul 20 2007 11:39 PM
Staff, wire reports
Jeff Siemon hasn’t played football since 1982, but he hasn’t been forgotten.
Siemon, a 1968 Bakersfield High School graduate, will be enshired into the College Football Hall of Fame today in South Bend, Ind.
Siemon, in an Associated Press story, compared the feeling of earning this hall of fame berth to finding an old sport coat in the attic with a $20 bill in the pocket.
Read the rest of this entry »
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