Turning on the AC: Area’s best sport heads toward home stretch
Every once in a while, I’m asked what I believe is our area’s top sport. This usually happens after one of the local squads wins a CIF championship.
For this area, most sports have an ebb and flow. One season Crescenta Valley High football wins a championship, then Burroughs boys’ volleyball claims a CIF SoCal title and just this past Friday, Glendale High captured the Division IV girls’ tennis crown.
Yet, only one sport has been truly consistent and dominant every year: cross-country.
I know most don’t people like to get up early and travel, but Saturday’s CIF Southern Section championships, which begin at 7:45 a.m. at the Riverside Cross County Course, offer a wonderful chance to witness a spectacular gathering, if not the end of an era.
Bellarmine-Jefferson, Burbank, Burroughs, Crescenta Valley, Flintridge Prep, Flintridge Sacred Academy, La Cañada and Providence will all be competing, looking first to win and secondly to advance to the season-ending CIF State Meet at Fresno’s Woodward Park on Nov. 25.
The Crescenta Valley boys (Pacific League), Flintridge Prep boys and girls (Prep League), Flintridge Sacred Academy girls (Mission League) and La Cañada girls (Rio Hondo League) enter as team champions.
Among area teams, 15 individual league championships will be represented.
Burroughs’ Emily Virtue (2015 and 2016 Pacific League) and Jagdeep Chahal (2017 Pacific League), Crescenta Valley’s Colin FitzGerald (2016 Pacific League) and Caitlyn Couch (2014 and 2015 Santa Fe League and 2016 Camino Real League), Flintridge Prep’s Evan Pattinelli (2016 Prep League) and Sasha Codiga (2016 Prep League), La Cañada’s Kayley Bond (2017 Rio Hondo League), Adena DiPaolo (2016 Rio Hondo League) and Katie Scoville (2014 and 2015 Rio Hondo League), Providence’s Carissa Guardado (Liberty League 2017) and Bell-Jeff’s Nick Montijo (2017 Camino Real) will run Saturday.
Of the above athletes, quite a few turned in impressive runs.
Virtue owned an eight-meet league winning streak and FitzGerald a five-meet streak that were both ended at the Pacific League finals on Nov. 1.
Couch, who ran three years at Bell-Jeff before transferring to Crescenta Valley this summer, won nine straight league races between her freshman and juniors years. Before injuries took their toll, Scoville had claimed six straight league triumphs.
On the flip side, Chahal and Codiga only won one league race in their careers – both at league championships.
In the team standings, just over the last three seasons, the Flintridge Prep girls have won three CIF Southern Section Division V titles, while the Rebels boys own a Division V championship.
Burroughs boys’ cross-country turned in the most impressive championship in any sport during my tenure when it claimed the Division I title in 2014.
Since 2013, the area has produced at least one CIF Southern Section team championship.
What other area sport can claim that?
The numbers are simply staggering and largely pure.
While division realignment and competitive equity has cast large schools into lower divisions and small schools in higher divisions, cross-country has remained relatively unchanged.
Teams in Division I or Division V genuinely belong there and are competing against like-sized schools.
As for Saturday, it’s a little bittersweet for me because a great crop of talented and decorated seniors will be running for the final time in high school in Southern California.
Virtue and FitzGerald have rewritten record books at Burroughs and Crescenta Valley, respectively, Couch proved that though she competed in lower divisions before, she’s a top-flight runner, Pattinelli picked up his program after the departure of its greatest runner Jack Van Scoter, and Scoville showed tremendous heart in coming back to running after a slew of injuries over the past two years.
After this season, there will be plenty of change across area cross-country. Such a strong class of runners doesn’t come around too often.
It will be interesting to see who steps up next season and beyond. Before that, though, there are still a couple more finish lines in sight.
