Young runs 14:28.9 for No. 2 all-time mark on 5-kilometer layout, but Great Oak rebounds from Sept. 21 loss at Woodbridge Classic to surge past Panthers in final mile in 57-65 victory to even season series

By Landon Negri for DyeStat

The challenges keep coming for Nico Young. He met and surpassed them again Saturday morning, but a familiar rival also let him know that it's not going away.

Young, a Newbury Park CA senior, prevailed against a tremendous front-running pack of state champions and won the boys championship race – just missing a course record – in the 41st ASICS Clovis Invitational at Woodward Park in Fresno, Calif.

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While Young was continuing his undefeated season, his Newbury Park team did not. In a much-anticipated matchup between the nation’s No. 1 boys cross country team, Newbury Park, and No. 2 Great Oak, the Wolfpack used impressive pack running and a 15-second, five-man gap to win by eight points.

The teams have now met twice, with Newbury Park securing a 33-point victory Sept. 21 in the Woodbridge Classic in Norco, Calif., and each have a win. Because they reside in different CIF Southern Section divisions, they would not race head to head again until a potential third showdown Dec. 7 at Nike Cross Nationals in Portland, Ore.

“We’re disappointed a little bit, but we know what we have to do from this point,” said Young, the defending California Division 2 champion.

“We think we’ll be pretty confident going into our next race. I think we’re going to just take it as something to learn from.”

While Young was winning in 14 minutes, 28.9 seconds and teammate Jace Aschbrenner was placing fourth in 15:03.5, Great Oak placed six runners in front of the Panthers’ No. 4 scorer to tally 57 points to the Panthers' 65. Dublin was third with 208.

Seniors Chris Verdugo (eighth, 15:13.6) and Cole Sawires Yager (ninth, 15:13.6) paced the victory, which came largely due to the team’s ability to rally in the final mile, as it came all the way back from a projected 32-point deficit at the 2-mile mark.

“Since we were so far back the first mile, all we could think of is, ‘Just keep going, just keep going.’” Verdugo said. “We’ve just got to fight all the way to the end and we just have to give it our all until the line.”

It was the 11th consecutive Woodward Park victory for Great Oak between Clovis invitationals and state meets. The Wolfpack have not lost in Fresno since 2013, securing a sixth straight championship race victory.
Coach Doug Soles always refers to Woodward Park as his team’s home course, despite the Temecula campus being some 300-plus miles away from the friendly park on Fresno’s northeast side.

It’s easy to see why.

“We have a lot of really talented older guys,” Soles said. “We’re not relying on freshmen and sophomores. We’ve got some old guys that know what they can do. There is a lot of experience on this team.”

Soles pointed specifically to his seniors – Verdugo, Sawires Yager, Gabe Abbes (18th, 15:27.8) and Aric Reza (23rd, 15:32.6) – for a gutsy showing.

“I’m very proud of our seniors continuing to step up,” he said. “Everybody is dealing with some sickness and some different things, but our kids battled through that and found a way to deliver.”

Interestingly, though the Panthers fell to the Wolfpack, they had a better team time than Great Oak’s 76:47.2.

So good, in fact, it nearly broke the all-time team time at Woodward Park.

Newbury Park ran 76:09.1 on Saturday; the record of 76:08.5 was set by Great Oak in 2015.

“This is just a marker of where we’re at,” Newbury Park coach Sean Brosnan said. “We’ve got some work to do on the backside of our guys. What Great Oak did was they had a pack of guys right in front of our 4-5-6, and that made a huge difference.”

So did Young.

Following his 3,200-meter win in April at the Arcadia Invitational in track, where he outdueled Valor Christian CO standout Cole Sprout to win in a meet-record 8:40.0, and his historic run of 13:39.7 at Woodbridge – the fastest 3-mile high school performance ever – Young delivered another gem Saturday.

Leo Daschbach, the Arizona Division 1 state champion from Highland who ran the second-fastest 5-kilometer high school race ever Sept. 27 at the Desert Twilight Festival in Arizona, and the defending Division 1 champion from California, Carmichael Jesuit’s Matt Strangio, gave Young all he could handle.

And for a moment in the last mile, Young worried.

“I think probably toward the end, with maybe like a (kilometer) to go, I was a little bit nervous,” he said. “So I tried to kick it in. I think I was probably a little bit nervous, but I was confident in my kick.”

There would be no meet records this time, as Young was four seconds off the 14:24 that German Fernandez ran for Riverbank in 2007. Young did break a 37-year-old Southern Section record, set first by Camarillo's Eric Reynolds and tied in 1989 by Agoura's Bryan Dameworth.

Daschbach pushed Young to the line and placed second in 14:30.9. It is the fastest time run at Woodward Park run by an athlete from Arizona, breaking a mark from 1980 set by Tom Ansberry of Santa Rita High in Tucson.

“I didn’t have the strength to close on him,” Daschbach said. “He just had too much room. And I was too weak at the end to catch him. He ran a really smart race, I think. He gapped himself so much I couldn’t close him down.”

Told he set a new Arizona record, Daschbach offered a little bit of a mixed response.

“It’s definitely awesome I got the record, but I don’t really chase times,” he said. “I care more about the competition.”

Strangio, fighting sickness, ran 14 seconds faster than when he won Division 1 last year at the state meet. He broke 15 minutes for the first time here, and also broke the record of 14:54 for the storied Jesuit program, a mark previously held by Mark Mastalir from 1985.

“I kind of knew coming in because I had been sick all week – I missed school on Thursday – that it would be a struggle health-wise,” said Strangio, who led Jesuit to a fifth-place finish.

“But I knew I put in the workouts. I ran crazy workouts, even early in the week and feeling so good, I thought my legs would be able to carry me.”

Watching all this happen in front of him was Aschbrenner. He followed up his second-place finish at Woodbridge with a 15:03.5 on Saturday.

“This was kind of an interesting race because there were a lot more guys in between us this time, rather than Woodbridge,” Aschbrenner said of Young and himself. “But I think it was really good for me because I got to just like ... every mile I had somebody to look for to pick off because Nico just leaves a trail of carnage behind him every time he races.”

JSerra senior Anthony Grover, the reigning Division 4 state champion, finished fifth in 15:09.5, while Bakersfield Ridgeview senior Alex Cuevas ran sixth in 15:13.2.

Clovis North senior Joshua Ochoa led his team to a fourth-place finish at 229 points. He clocked a time of 15:13.3. Senior teammate Isaiah Galindo helped spearhead the effort, as well, finishing 10th in 15:16.3.