FINAL UPDATE - GIRLS
Th results are in for the 40th Annual Woodbridge Invitational and City teams provided some exciting and unexpected performances. 303 athletes from 16 City schools competed in the largest high school invitational in 2 years. Refer to the chart at the end of this section for tally of runners by division and grade.
Granada Girls Represent City
No surprises on the girls side as Granada Hills had 4 girls under 19 minutes in the Rated race at Saturday night’s Woodbridge Invitational.
The table below ranks the Top-10 City girl performances across all races at the Woodbridge Invitational:
City Top-10 Performances - All Divisions
Note: ‘Variance’ is the sum of the differences between each runners 1,2 and 3-mile splits. On a flat course an optimal performance would look to minimize this variance.
Sofia Abrego (above) lead Granada to a 10th place finish in the Varsity Rated race, nearly breaking 18 minutes. Isabel Castagnola was Granada’s 2nd finisher and had a huge performance, running 18:27.8 for a 65 second PR.
Several girls from division 2 had impressive performances as well. Keely Miyamoto (Eagle Rock) was off to a fast start at Cool Breeze with 19:20.2 clocking that ranked her 3rd in LA City. But she crushed that time by almost 40 seconds at Woodbridge with a PR of 18.41.9. Angelica Milar of Bravo Medical Magnet, our #2 pick for the division 2 individual City title, ran a 19:30.3 in her first 3-miler of the year. And Celeste Corrigan took a minute off her Cool Breeze time to PR at 19.42.4.
In her first race since the June City track finals Kennedy’s Frieda Cedillo ran a PR of 19:04.3 and placed 7th in the Varsity Blue-B race, ranking her 6th in LA City. She had the smallest split variance of any runner in our Top-10, boy or girl, and was closest to running perfect negative splits. A really nice run!
City Top Team Performances - All Divisions
Note: ‘Score’ and ‘Team Time’ are based on minimum 5 & maximum 7 runners per team, across all races. Teams with less than 5 athletes competing in boys and girls races do not have scores or team times. ‘Spread’ is the time difference between each team’s 1st and 5th runner.
Eagle Rock and Marshall Surprise
We picked Eagle Rock to win their division 2 overall but with no track season and a lackluster performance at Cool Breeze we were doubting ourselves. But they were out in force Saturday night and left very little in doubt in terms of who the favorite will be in November. Led by 3 returnees from their 3rd-place ‘19 varsity team -Keely Miyamoto, Kiana Andrada, and Marielle Williamson - as well as the Corrigan sisters, Celeste and Elizabeth, they brought all their scoring runners in under 22:06.8.
The Marshall girls were also a question mark coming into this meet. Coaching changes and no activity from their top runner Thea Amon-Franceschi since 2019 were red flags. But 5 of their top girls have returned from 2019 (including Thea!) and picked up where they left off 2 years ago. This is really a testament to the quality of the Marshall XC program; no other City team had that level of retention while also maintaining performance levels.
City Girls Div 1 Team Performances
The big shift on this chart is Taft who we ranked as #2 in the ‘Preseason Picks’. Their top runner Amelie Missig is out for the season with a stress fracture and so did not run Woodbridge. Her impact is immense; if she had run Woodbridge Taft would have likely scored close to #3 Marshall.
ECR was missing one of their top runners Rebecca Ascencio at Woodbridge so assuming she’s not out permanently they should show better in the future.
FINAL UPDATE - BOYS
The table below ranks the Top-10 City boys performances across all races at the Woodbridge Invitational:
Boys Top City Performances - All Divisions
Note: ‘Variance’ is the sum of the differences between each runners 1,2 and 3-mile splits. On a flat course an optimal performance would look to minimize this variance.
Max Fields in the last 400 meters at the Woodbridge Invitational. Max took 2nd place in 15:27.7 in the Varsity Blue race, losing to the Serrano runner by 4/10th’s of a second.
As expected, Palisades performed well and took top City honors for the boys at Woodbridge. Sophomore Max Fields was the front-runner for the Dolphins and clocked a LA City top time of 5:27.7 in a nail-biter that was decided in the last 100 meters. David Tobin was Palisades 2nd finisher in 14:58.4 and a big surprise. Not on our radar as Palisades top 5 he’ll be a big boost to their City title bid if he can continue at this level.
Austin Ledgerwood ran well for El Camino Real finishing in 10th place in the Varsity Gold-B race with a 15:40.2 and ranking #3 in LA City. A gutsy racer he went out in one of the fastest City 1st-mile splits and also finished with one of the fastest City 3rd-mile splits, giving up only a single position the whole race.
The biggest surprise of the meet was San Pedro’s Daniel Ruiz who ran a 15:53.1 on Friday night, a massive 1 min 39 sec PR. He had done well a week ago (17:32.5) on a hilly and very hot Laguna Hills Invite course so the potential was there but this was really a break-out performance.
And to put a final point on the Marshall ‘21 program progress, Finlay Robertson showed significant improvement in just 2 weeks over his Rosemead time finishing in 16:13.4 in the Varsity Red-B race on Friday night to lead his team to a 9th place finish just ahead of San Pedro. Not quite a PR for Finlay but certainly going in the right direction for a very talented runner that we expect to place in the top 10 at City Finals.
Taft’s Emmanuel Palacios competes in the Varsity-Blue race at the Woodbridge Invitational. In only his 2nd high school race, the senior pulled down an impressive 16:41.5. (photo credit: Phil Missig)
Boys City Team Summary - All Divisions
Note: ‘Score’ and ‘Team Time’ are based on minimum 5 & maximum 7 runners per team, across all races. Teams with less than 5 athletes competing in boys and girls races do not have scores or team times. ‘Spread’ is the time difference between each team’s 1st and 5th runner.
Boys City Top Team Performances - Division 1
Subtle shifts in the D1 boys rankings. Even though James Lopez didn’t have a big performances the team as a whole ran well and they continue to get improvements from their 3rd-5th runners. They now have 4 boys under 17:00; almost there!
Team spread isn’t always a perfect indicator of team performance. Granada Hills had the lowed 1st-5th boy scoring spread (50.1 seconds) but were a bit off. Their sophomore Alexander Mendoza continues to improve leading the Highlanders with a 16:26.0 but some of their other top athletes had better performances at Cool Breeze.
City Participation at Woodbridge
