Newbury Park High School Boys AND Girls Cross County Teams Win State Championships and Earn a Spot to the Nike Cross Nationals (NXN)

Today, the Newbury Park High School Cross Country program achieved a number of historic firsts.

For the first time in school history, the Girls Cross County team won the state championship at Woodward Park in Fresno. The top 5 scoring team members on the 5 kilometer (approximately 3.1 mile) course were Sam McDonnell (17:56.4), Hailey Golmon (17:57.7), Fiona Hawkins (17:58.5), Ailish Hawkins (18:27.4) and Gretchen Slattum (18:31.9). Other varsity teammates included Archana Mohandas and Hannah Round.

For the first time in school history, the Boys Cross County team won back to back championship titles, led by two-time overall state championship winner Nico Young (14:28.5) followed by Jace Aschbrenner (2nd overall in 14:53.7), Colin Sahlman (15:09.8), Nick Goldstein (15:17.0) and Daniel Appleford (15:37.7). Up and comer Leo Young was the top freshman finisher in the race in 15:41.6) - in fact, he was the top freshman finisher among all CIF divisions today. Thomas McDonnell also competed for the team.

There were 1004 finishers in the combined Division 1-5 boys races today. The Newbury Park team had the 1st and 3rd (Jace) fastest seniors, the 5th (Nicholas) fastest junior, the 1st (Colin) and 5th (Daniel) fastest sophomores and the fastest overall freshman. That’s some serious firepower.

Head Coach Sean Brosnan was excited to report via his Twitter account tonight that BOTH teams received invitations to participate in next Saturday’s Nike Cross Nationals (NXN) in Portland, Oregon. The boys team competed at NXN for the first time last year and placed 6th in the nation, led by Nico’s 4th place overall finish. This year the team is looking to top the charts as it competes with strong teams from Temecula (Great Oak), Loudoun Valley, Virginia and other schools.

Senior Nico Young in clear command of the CIF Division 2 Championships race at Woodward Park in Fresno. I asked Nico before the race if he was going for the course record of 14:24 set by German Fernandez in 2007. His answer was no. Nico’s plan was to win the race but to save his top effort for NXN next Saturday. His 14:28.5 was the 2nd fastest of all time on the course, which is even more impressive given he was not going “all out.” Earlier this year, Young ran an 8:40 3200 meters on the track, the fastest time in the country this year and 3rd fastest 3200 of all time.

The boys team was an automatic qualifier into NXN, having not only the fastest team time of the day at 75:27 (15:06 average) but the fastest team time in Woodward Park course history. Let’s break this down a bit. 15:06 equates to a tad over a 4 minutes, 52 seconds per mile, for 3.1 miles, on average, for 2 high school seniors, 1 junior and 2 sophomores. Now THAT is impressive!

The previous fastest team score among all divisions was Great Oaks’ 2015 team time of 76:10. Newbury Park’s 2019 boys team destroyed that record by 43 seconds. That’s almost 3 seconds per mile per kid faster than the fastest team time of all time!

The Great Oak boys team won for the 6th straight year in the Division 1 race with a combined time of 76.23, nearly a minute slower than the record-setting Newbury Park team in Division 2, but still the 3rd fastest team score in course history (excluding Newbury Park’s new record).

However, the fastest team time DOES NOT guarantee a team win in the sport of cross country. The Great Oak team, ranked #1 in the nation recently by Dyestat, finished today’s race with an extremely tight gap of under 17 seconds between runners 1 and 5. This was today’s tightest gap of any team among all divisions.

In cross country, the team with the lowest finishing score wins the race, with a lowest possible score of 15 (1-2-3-4-5). So effectively, it does not matter how fast Nico runs when he finishes first; he still scores 1 point for the team. What often matters most is how the 5th place team finisher scores. For example, in today’s race, if the boys’ team’s 5th place finisher, who scored 19 points, finished 5 seconds slower, he would have scored 29 points. In a tight team race, 10 points is devastating. Inversely, Nico could have run 25 seconds slower and still won the race, having no impact on the team score.

And speaking of team score, the boys’ team score of 37 was the lowest Division 2 winning team school in CIF history. The previous record team score was set in 1987 (Walnut High School) and tied in 1988 (Katella High School). Newbury Park will now sit alone atop this record.

But let’s not ignore this fantastic Newbury Park girls team. The girls ran a combined time of 90:52 for its top 5 runners (18:11 average 5K time per girl). That was the 5th fastest time on the course in Division 2 history.

The Great Oak girls team won a record-breaking 8th straight Division 1 title today in a team time of 90:33, only 19 seconds faster than the upstart Newbury Park team. It’s gonna be some race to watch at NXN!

To follow the Newbury Park teams at NXN, visit https://nxn.runnerspace.com or watch a live webcast of the race at cdn.runnerspace.com/nxnlive.html. Congratulations!

NPHSXC: www.newburyparkcrosscountry.com

And here’s a rundown of other local team top performers at the state championships today:

• Madelene Locher of Ventura finished 5th overall (17:43) and Jill Walker of Simi Valley finished 7th (17:49) in the Divison 2 girls race.

• Thousand Oaks High School finished 6th overall in the boys Division 2 race, led by Michael Mireles, who finished 4th overall in 15:03.

• Agoura High School boys finished 3rd overall in the Division 3 race, led by Beau Bordelon, who finished 6th overall inn 15:34. Royal High School finished 7th overall.

• Brooke Secreto of Foothill Tech won the Division 4 girls race in 17:33. Foothill Tech boys won the Division 4 race, led by 5th place Joshua Villasenor (15:28).