Santa Barbara’s Briggs Deardorff just missed a trip to the State Cross Country Meet in Fresno, topping out in 17th place at the CIF Finals at Mt. SAC on Saturday.
Deardorff’s time of 15 minutes and 45 seconds was 11 ticks quicker than his race at Prelims, yet not fast enough to qualify in a Division III race that San Marcos coach Lawrence Stehmeier called one of the fastest he’s ever seen.
San Marcos senior Evan Bradford’s solid 16:12 time still put him in 50th place in a race that had 32 runners break 16 minutes.
“It was blazing fast,” Stehmeier said. “It was a great season, a great four years, a great way for (Bradford) to go out.”
Both Bradford and Deardorff were the first male runners from their respective schools to make it to CIF Finals in at least a decade.
Dos Pueblos junior Sergey Sushchikh fell off his pace from the week before, dropping to 47th place in the Division II race. The top 45 runners in Division II were better than 16 minutes while the day’s best time came from winner Elias Gedyon, of Loyola, in a blistering 14:31.
Cate’s Mackenzie Walsh was 12th in the Division V race, trimming her time from the week before by an incredible 44 seconds to come in at 19:49. Cate’s girls team finished in 10th place with a score of 242. Cate sophomore Charlotte Bowles broke the top-50 by completing the course in 22:06. Lexi Greenwald, Adrian Walsh, Denali Tietjen, Ruth Kwon and Abby Killea all placed in the top-100 for the Rams.
