Note to the Dougherty Valley Cross Country team, parents and a few alums

I hope you all got home in less time then it took to get into that parking lot! The drive home gave me some time to reflect on the weekend and I wanted to share my thoughts about the Woodbridge meet in Norco.

First - thank you to the parents for getting your athletes to the venue on time. This was no small challenge as we all learned (it took an hour for us to get the half-mile from the freeway to the parking lot) but everyone was there in time to get prepared for their races. Between the car traffic and cell tower traffic we were all challenged and the coaches had to rely on Coach Lauren to relay results from NorCal as she was getting information much faster than us.

Second - Dougherty had an amazing meet! At the team level we were seeded into two of the four premiere races against some of the best teams in California, Texas and other states and the runners performed beautifully - racing after 9 PM under the lights no less! As we all know the boys won the rated race (the second toughest seed) and the girls were 12th in the Sweepstakes against the toughest competition, but digging a little deeper, the boys had the 22nd fastest time of the entire event beating eleven of the sweepstakes teams who raced in the fastest boys race, and the girls had the 15th fastest time of the entire event. The obvious question was - how would we do after combining both boys and girls against the rest of the field? Near as I can tell Dougherty Valley had the 10th best combined time behind some of the best teams in the country (Newbury Park, Great Oak, Mira Costa, and Buchanan - storied California programs; a couple of the Texas squads and a few others). There were 16 varsity races during the weekend so there were 100s of schools racing!

Third - the depth of the boys squad resulted in the tightest scoring gap of the meet - after Andy crossed in 15:20, the next four boys (Diego, Shane, Danny, and Alex) crossed the line in the next 12 seconds. No tighter grouping was seen in the entire meet, and then our sixth runner of this meet, Raghav, sealed the 1 point victory for the team crossing two seconds later and beating Ventura's 5th runner! Noor waSas close behind at 16:00 with the fastest time of any Freshman in the rated race. And all of their times were PRs!

Fourth - the girls were led across the finish line by Sabrina in 17:06, with the next three runners in by 18:08 (Rhea (17:22), Eva (17:53), and Kirstin(18:08)). Liana, Riyanka, and Nikita joined them by all getting PRs too! Sabrina and Rhea ended up on the top 100 girls list for the weekend (32nd and 56th). Eva missed the top 100 by 3 seconds! ... and Sabrina was the fourth fastest freshwoman of the weekend.

Fifth - Coach Steph and I were able to watch Dougherty Valley alums race collegiately at UC Riverside earlier in the day when Dougherty alumni runners from UC Riverside (Ashraf), UC Irvine (Sameen), USC (Ritika), and St Mary's (Aushmitha, Tommy and Sofia) raced in the Riverside Invitational. It was an interesting moment when the USC coach introduced himself to Coach Steph and me - clearly he knew about the Dougherty program and told us he'd be at Woodbridge for the rest of the day and night. We were alerted before the meet the the CSU East Bay coach was interested in talking with some of the seniors and I spotted the coaches from Fresno Pacific talking to Rhea after her race. It's really nice to see the interest being expressed in the athletes and to see the alums in action in collegiate racing! And Ashraf and Sameen found their way to Woodbridge to cheer on the Wildcats.

Finally - I'm sure I missed some highlights here and forgive me for any oversights as they are truly my own. On behalf of the entire coaching staff (Lauren, Efferem and Jake who were on a very loud group text session watching the entire event online, while Steph and I were running around encouraging the team) please know that we are incredibly proud of all 14 runners who toed the line, competed and excelled! I for one am really looking forward to the rest of the season!

Coach Ralph

Photo below: Dougherty Valley Alumnae - Aushsmitha Grewal ('19) - St Mary's, Ritika Singh ('21) - USC, Coach Stephanie Bambury, Sameen Andar ('21) - UC Irvine, and Sofia Cuevas ('19) - St Mary's at UC Riverside Invitational