RASCON CLOSES WITH VICTORY
Shortened cross country season finishes with a flourish at Clear Lake State Park
>> A much-too-short cross country season, the first to take place in Lake County in the late winter and early spring because of the COVID-19 pandemic, couldn’t have asked for a better closing act at a better venue Wednesday afternoon.
Hosted by the Kelseyville Knights and head coach Nicki Thomas, the Coastal Mountain Conference meet featured runners from five teams who traversed the roads and trails at Clear Lake State Park near Kelseyville, a most scenic setting for the season finale for the host Knights as well as Middletown, Upper Lake, Sonoma Academy and Mendocino.
“This beats our other course,” Kelseyville head coach Nicki Thomas said of the Knights’ traditional home course that wraps around Mountain Vista Middle School. “This is a good and challenging course, all kinds of surfaces.”
Thomas begin filling out all the necessary paperwork to secure Clear Lake State Park as a venue back in February.
“I had to submit an application, I needed to have a COVID action plan,” Thomas said. “But we got it all done and it was worth it.”
Thomas said she definitely wants to host another meet at Clear Lake State Park in the fall 2021 season, which with any luck won’t have to jump through all the health safety hoops that this one did.
The top 10 boys and girls received a special treat Wednesday in the form of medals that were donated by Bill Vanderwall of Vanderwall Engineering of Kelseyville. Those medals were presented by Thomas to the top finishers following each of the two races held on the 3.1mile course.
“We thought we could do something nice for the kids because there isn’t a conference meet this year,” Thomas said.
While the cross country regular season usually begins in late summer and runs through late fall, it is always followed — until this year — by a conference championship meet, which rotates among schools) a sectional meet held in Hayward, and the state meet at Woodward Park in Fresno. But the COVID-19 pandemic canceled all of that, leaving only a reduced regular season that began on Feb. 24 at Six Sigma Ranch and Winery near Lower Lake and wrapped up Wednesday, less than two months later.
“I thought it went really well, I just wish it could have been longer,” Thomas said of the much-delayed fall 2020 season that opened nearly a halfyear behind schedule, forcing coaches to scramble to find runners and put together schedules all while adhering to COVID-19 safety protocol.
“We’re already talking about running together in the summer,” Thomas said of her returning runners, which include freshmen Carly Vanderwall and Elliott Mayo.
Thomas said she’s encouraging her returning runners to spread the word and recruit their friends so that the Knights can have complete boys and girls teams (at least five runners) in the fall.
First-year Middletown head coach Taylor Tiraterra did have complete boys and girls teams to work with this season despite all the pandemic could do to throw obstacles in his way during his rookie campaign. He had some of the top runners in the county and one of the best in the Redwood Empire’s smallschool ranks in senior Isaac Rascon, who is headed to the University of Northern Colorado on scholarship where he will continue his running career.
Rascon, one of seven seniors in the Middletown program and the boys team captain this season, and girls team captain Erica Kinsel, who has been accepted to the University of California in Santa Barbara where she will be majoring in engineering, provided a stable foundation for the 2020-21 squad that Tiraterra inherited.
While some coaches come aboard with the cupboard empty, that wasn’t the case for Tiraterra.
“I couldn’t have asked for a better season,” Tiraterra said. “This group of kids was better than I ever could have imagined. It was an outstanding year.
“The sad part is I’m losing half of my team,” he added of graduating seniors Rascon, Kinsel, Isaiah Diaz, Filemon Sanchez, Shane Guill, Kevin Nance and Chris Russ, “but these guys are off to do great things.”
Tiraterra said he’ll be busy locating more runners between now and the start of the fall season, though he has some huge shoes to fill in Rascon.
“He’s going places,” Tiraterra said. “I can’t wait to see what the future holds for him.”
A loyal fan of the longsuffering New York Jets pro football franchise, Tiraterra said that if his favorite team could add the talent and dedication his runners brought to the table in 2021, the Jets might actually win something one day.
“They would definitely be a better team,” he said.
Boys race
Rascon completed an undefeated season by covering a course he’s never run before in 17 minutes and 43 seconds, well ahead of Sonoma Academy runners Tiernan Colby (19:04) and Athena Ryan (19:39), who were the only other runners to post sub-20-minute times.
A deep Middletown team flexed its considerable muscle after that. Xander Romero came in fourth in 20:36, Diaz was sixth in 20:56, Guill was ninth in 21:03, and Sanchez rounded out the top 10, also at 21:03 and just a fraction of a second behind teammate Guill.
Also cracking the top 10 were Sonoma Academy’s Luke Fuette, fifth in 20:42, Mendocino’s Gavin Hahn, seventh in 20:59, and Upper Lake’s Donavan Fernandez, eighth in 21:02.
Posting top-15 finishes were Middletown’s Parker Boden, 11th in 21:17, Kelseyville’s Mayo, 12th in 21:53, Middletown’s Nance, 13th in 22:16, and Upper Lake’s Erick Espinoza, 15th in 24:03.
Girls
Lucy Gott, a junior from Sonoma Academy and the winner a week ago on Upper Lake’s new 3.1-mile course, made it two victories in a row at Lake County venues by doing to the girls field what Rascon did the boys field.
In fact, Gott’s win was even more dominant as she finished in 21:25, or almost four minutes ahead of Middletown’s Maya Leonard and Sonoma Academy’s Ally Glenn, who staged an all-out sprint for the finish line after running shoulder to shoulder across a narrow bridge that leads to the final 50 yards of the course.
Leonard clocked in 25:05 to Glenn’s 25:05.5.
Upper Lake’s Zoey Petrie finished a strong 2021 season with a fourthplace finish of 26:21. Kinsel was fifth in 26:49, Sonoma Academy’s Sarah Kam was sixth in 27:02, Kelseyville’s Vanderwall finished seventh in 27:19, Middletown’s Mariah Ketchum was eighth in 28:49, Kelseyville’s Summer Anderson placed ninth in 29:05, and Upper Lake’s Dena Loans Arrow secured the final girls medal with a 10th-place time of 29:09.