Female harriers sweep Jesuit/Davis Jamboree as men fall to Marauders

By Willa Moffatt,
Bluedevilhub.com Editor–

The Davis High women cross-county teams dominated once again at the Jesuit/Davis Jamboree, held at Granite Regional Park on Saturday, Sept. 12.

The Devils swept the women’s varsity, open and frosh/soph races, and also won the men’s open race. The men’s varsity claimed second behind rival Jesuit, and men’s frosh/soph came in fourth.

Senior standout Fiona O’Keeffe and juniors Abbey Fisk and Sofia Castiglioni finished first, second and third, respectively, in the women’s varsity race to contribute to their squad’s victory. O’Keeffe finished 44 seconds ahead of second-place Fisk, and her time of 16:59 demolished her own DHS course record of 17:36 from two years ago.

Junior Carolina Leshuk led her teammates in the women’s open race, in which DHS took nine of the first 10 spots. Leshuk attributed the success to the depth of the team.

“We have so many amazing athletes this year on all of the teams. Personally, it felt really nice to win my race, and I beat my previous time which was a good plus. Lots of Davis runners did really well, so I’m really happy that we are off to a good start as a team,” Leshuk said.

The team ran well at its first meet at Lagoon Valley also, but Leshuk felt that this second race in particular made the team more confident.

“It’s hard to compare the meet from this weekend to last weekend’s because the courses are so different. However, since this course is so flat I think in general many runners felt more comfortable and felt like they performed better. It seemed like our runners really stepped up and worked together,” she said.

Junior Michael Vernau took the individual title in the men’s varsity race, despite the team’s overall second-place finish. Vernau credited the runner-up team finish to the absence of several key runners who were injured or taking the ACT that same morning.

“As a team we were missing Kellen [Browning], Willie [Hall] and Ben [Roberts], so that was our number three, four and five out. Because of that and the fact that Jesuit has a deep team this year, they handily beat us,” Vernau said.

However, Vernau–who ran a DHS course record of 15:01–is looking forward to future match-ups with Jesuit.

“I’m excited for the end of the season when we have our full team since the Sac-Joaquin Section is looking really strong this year,” he said.