Cross country confronts state meet course at Clovis Invitational

Senior Perry Winsor, who finished first for the men’s varsity team at the Clovis Invitational, races earlier this year at the cross country team’s first meet. (Courtesy: C. Gregg)

By Annie Mitchell,
BlueDevilHUB.com Editor–

The Davis High cross country team sent four teams to Fresno for the annual Clovis Invitational on Oct. 7. The women’s varsity team came in 20th place and the men’s freshman/sophomore team secured 19th. Both the men’s varsity team and the women’s JV team finished eighth overall.

Although he had never run the course before, senior Perry Winsor was first to finish for the varsity men’s team in 26th place. His time was 16:23.9 for 5,000 meters.

Next up were senior James Brunette (44th), juniors Kyle Henricson (67th) and Bryce Gregg (78th) and sophomore Zeno Castiglioni (84th), bringing the total team score to 296. Senior Sam Blakewell and junior Kobe Standefer rounded out the squad, finishing 104th and 130th respectively.

Although he was initially nervous, Henricson ended up pleased with his finish at Clovis. Henricson began running at the varsity level this year and has enjoyed being on the team so far.

“I love the social aspect of being on varsity, since you find a good group of friends who share a common goal, and we can have friendly competition, which pushes us all to improve,” Henricson said.

In the women’s varsity race, Olivia O’Keeffe ran to finish 15th out of 179 competitors. She broke 18 minutes for 5,000 meters with a time of 17:54.8.

Junior Sophie Lodigiani was the second Blue Devil to cross the finish line in 52nd place. Freshman Ana Fenton followed in 136th place, while sophomore Auden Marsh-Armstrong and senior Sage Taylor finished three seconds apart in 146th and 147th places respectively.

Sophomores Shannon Perry (150th) and Maggie Vasquez (152nd) also competed. The women’s total score came to 467.

O’Keeffe, Lodigiani and Taylor are all returning varsity members and have raced at the Clovis Invitational many times. This was the other four members’ first encounters with the Woodward Park course.

“I thought the younger girls did really well,” Lodigiani said. “It’s a massive race and I know I was intimidated the first time I ran at Clovis. But they seemed to hold it together really well and I think we all had a good time.”

Taylor also praised the underclassmen performances.

“The sophomores [and] freshmen did a great job running together,” Taylor said.

In the women’s JV race, junior Hannah Lybbert (34th), sophomore Selby Anderson (37th), sophomore Mia Di Genova (42nd), senior Abby Reina-Guerra (92nd) and senior Odessa Seng (149th) ran to a team score of 271.

Freshman Ansel Tucker (38th), sophomore James Leistikow (105th), sophomore Tegan Favorite (125th), sophomore Nick Blakewell (127th) and freshman Hayden Tan (147th) contributed to the men’s freshmen/sophomore team score of 488.

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