Chico boys and Foothill girls shine at EAL Center Meet
Chico's Giannini, Bundy top the varsity fields

Wednesday October 27, 2017
By Nick Woodard , Chico Enterprise-Record with significant editing by Tom Cushman

CHICO, CA -- The Chico High cross country team's Wednesday afternoon was a little too fast-paced to be dubbed "a walk in the park." But a similar metaphor would suffice. So despite hot conditions for early fall (low 90s), the Panthers claimed the top spots in both the boys' and girls' varsity races at the Eastern Athletic League Center Meet, held at Hooker Oak Park on Wednesday. The boys team also took first overall out of six teams, while the girls finished the runnerup to a strong Foothill contingent. Pleasant Valley also competed at Hooker Oak, taking second in the boys' competition and fourth in the girls'.

The day's worth of varsity running began with the girls' 5-kilometer race, where Chico teammates Britta Bundy and Nahkia Clements finished within .05 seconds of each other to hold off a late charge by Foothill's Rize Oliveira as they all finished within a second of each other. Bundy was declared the winner in 20:26(although this observer saw it the other way around - TC), with Clements second and Oliveira third. Both runners said running with someone at the head of the field is a huge help, especially when it's someone they regularly practice with. "We train together," Clements said. "We know what runners we both are, so it's easier to run next to each other." The two Panthers were joined in the top 10 by Stefanie Valdez (21:55) with Abigail Edwards (22:16) in 15th and Natalie Harris (22:59) in 19th, rounding out the Chico contingent's scoring five.

Despite Chico taking the top two places in the race, superior depth on the part of the Foothill squad allowed the Cougars to take the team title with 31 points. Backing up Oliveira were Claire Durban (5th - 21:37), Grace Dudley (6th - 21:44) and Payton Obsorne (7th - 21:46) and Emma Flynn (10th - 22:00). Behind Chico's second place score of 44 was Shasta 3rd (62), Pleasant Valley 4th (101), Red Bluff 5th (148). Enterprise had an incomplete team.

For the Vikings, meanwhile, Kelsey Roach took fourth in 21:03.33, not too far off the pace of the leading group. Roach said she had a bit of the pre-race jitters earlier, but as soon as the gun went off, her focus went straight to staying within range of the top of the race. "I was trying to stay with the top three girls," Roach said. "Usually if you're with them, it's kind of hard to lose them." Roach was joined by fellow PV runners Hailey Askew, who took 23rd at 23:29.12, and the trio of Elizabeth Mercado (23:46.07), Bianca Acheson (23:49.29) and Lexi Robinson (23:51.15), who took 25th through 27th.

On the boys side of the event, Chico's Charlie Giannini won the race in 16:33, continuing his undefeated 2017 season with his fourth straight win. Fellow Chico runner Ty Thompson was third in 16:59, with Rory Monninger taking seventh in 17:48. Beyond that, places nine through 13 were occupied by Chico's Noah Trento, Riley Farrell, Kaleb Traficante, Bretten Farrell and Jaxon Leduc.

Despite being overshadowed by a dominating team performance by the Panthers, Pleasant Valley quietly had a strong effort as a group. the Vikings managed to place three inside the top six, with Xavier Simms (16:57) in second, Kyle Johnson (17:04) in fourth and Donovan Freer (17:30) in sixth. Unfortunately the Vikings couldn't place anyone else in the top 25.

It was no surprise to Simms, who said the strategy heading into Wednesday was well known amongst the Vikings. "Coming into this meet, we wanted to make a statement. We wanted to show Chico that we're back in this," Simms said. "We wanted to try and catch as many red shirts as we could." Simms did his part, feeling strong enough with a mile left in the race to surge into second place. He couldn't catch Giannini, but Simms said the message was delivered. "We definitely gave Chico a scare," Simms said. "We showed them we're contenders."

The domination of the Chico and Pleasant teams was very evident in the boys race as only two runners not from Chico finished in the top 10, Enterprise's Avery Grady (5th 17:06) and Shasta's Luke Bland (17:56). Chico led the scoring with 30 points, PV followed with 54, then Enterprise (3rd, 74 pts), Shasta (4th, 80 pts) and Red Bluff (5th, 134 pts). Surprisingly Foothill does not have enough runners to make a varsity boys team.