Lindsay Allen and her Homestead High School teammates know exactly where they want to spend their Thanksgiving weekend. So do Sarah Feng and her Monta Vista teammates: in Fresno.
Fresno? Not Disneyland, not Squaw Valley, not the Valley Fair Mall?
Nope, it’s California’s Central Valley, because for high school cross country runners, Woodward Park in Fresno is the place to be on the fourth Saturday of every November.
That’s the site of the annual CIF State Cross Country championships, and the top high school runners in California will hit the trail at Woodward Park on Nov. 28 for the annual state meet. The Santa Clara Valley will send along a host of runners whose qualifying efforts at the Central Coast Section finals on Nov. 14 at Crystal Springs in Belmont earned them state berths.
Allen and the Mustang girls earned their spot at the state meet by winning the Division I team title at CCS, and Feng and the Matadors won a state berth by finishing third in the D-I girls.
The Homestead boys will also send a team to Fresno after running third in the boys D-I finals.
Lynbrook senior Justin Robison was the CCS champion in the D-II boys race with Monta Vista’s Brent Mogensen running fourth in Division I, and each qualified for the state meet with their performance.
Girls who advanced as individuals at the section meet were Cupertino’s Caroline Gee, a sophomore who placed third in the CCS D-I race, and Lynbrook’s Maryam Jawid, a junior who finished sixth in Division II, and Angela Liu, a sophomore who ended up eighth.
Allen was fourth in the CCS D-I finals with teammate Katie Williams sixth and Elena Kamas 11th. The three will join Homestead runners Jillian O’Brien, Rebecca Hasser, Samantha Lieberman and Nicole Aufricht at state.
Feng ran 13th at CCS to lead the Matadors to a team second and a state qualifying berth. She’ll run at state with Mats Anna Hsiao, Claire Chang, Kelly Bishop, Akshara Majjiga and Madeleine Yip.
Christopher Reed led the Homestead boys at CCS with an eight-place finish, and he’ll lead a contingent of Mustangs to state that also includes Matthew Bennett, Ryan Ma, Daniel Graves and Max Sawyer.
