Cheruiyot is athlete of the week
Vacaville High runner was third overall at section meet to lead Bulldogs
For the first time since 1987, the Vacaville High boys cross country team secured its first Sac-Joaquin Section title as the Bulldogs grabbed the Division II and overall title.
Leading the way was junior Donovan Cheruiyot, who finished third overall with a time of 16 minutes, 16.7 seconds.
He is The Reporter’s Athlete of the Week.
Leading up to the morning when he lined up at the starting line at the Willow Hills Reservoir in Folsom, Cheruiyot best described his season as being on the seat of a roller coaster.
“My season has had its ups and downs,” he said. “It’s like a roller coaster, it’s back on that peak, back where I want it to be, and just getting into that race with the guys, it just felt like the season’s getting better and this is what it’s all been leading to.”
Cheruiyot is a first-year runner for the Bulldogs, so varsity head coach David Monk has enjoyed watching the junior make vast improvements over the course of the season.
“He’s (Cheruiyot) made tremendous progress and maybe as much growth as anybody over the course of this cross country fall season,” Monk said. “Donovan is new to our program. He just joined us for the first time this fall as a junior, so he took a little bit of time to get adjusted to the training, the volume, intensity and just change, but we saw immediate promise in him.”
Vacaville was extremely consistent at the section meet as its top five runners finished third through seventh.
Senior Kellen Ruiz (16:19.2), sophomore Colton Walker (16:27.3), seniors Asher Love (16:31.3) and Paul Hobbs (16:31.8) were the other four. Seeing so
much teamwork in races filled with individual times, Monk says it’s ingrained into the program’s identity.
“We are big on team focus here, and we had all five guys together at the two-mile marker and with a mile to go, all of our top five were still together so it just wasn’t Donovan out there leading the way,” Monk said. “It was a pack of five guys working together. We talked about all year about, just us.”
Cheruiyot credits running alongside his teammates for pushing him to an even better pace.
It was them (teammates) that really encouraged me,” he said. “When Kellen was pulling away, and I was like let me reel this guy back in, and then he came after me, and we just pushed each other. It was a great team effort.”
Once he crossed the finish line with his teammates, Cheryuiot was just excited to be able to go back to practice with his friends to prepare for state.
I’m looking forward to running with these guys,
and see what we can do, and having a great race at state as well, repeating what we did,” Cheryuiot said.
Being fresh to California from Texas, Cheryuiot has continued to impress Monk off and on the course, and he is excited to continue to see him compete for the next year and a half.
“There is something to say with the people that come from Texas, the majority is just that Southern sense of respect, family and unity,” Monk said. “You can sense that…Donovan has all those things and all those types of qualities
so we were just thrilled to add somebody that has all those traits that he has, and then add the fact that he is immensely talented as an athlete as well.”
Finishing behind the Bulldogs in D-II were Whitney (74 points) and Vista Del Lago of Folsom (92 points). In the overall varsity boys standings, Vacaville outraced Jesuit (95) and Davis (184).
Cheryuiot and the rest of the varsity boys team will be competing in the state meet at Woodward Park in Fresno on Friday, Nov. 27. The race is set to begin at 11:30 a.m.