The girls took their turn with this yesterday. Today, we're back with the boys.
As with the girls, it was a quiet week for boys cross country action in Arizona. You'd expect it to be that way, and it was.
We'll take the usual plan of attack and work our way down from largest meets of the week past to smallest meets of the week past. And, of course, we have to have results for your meet to make the cut.
Being located in Gilbert gives you a very good chance of hosting the largest meet of the weekend in Arizona. And perhaps especially so on a weekend when there isn't a lot of cross country action to begin with. While not exactly Titanic, it was still worth dubbing as the Titan Invitational.
Jon Barney notched his second meet title of the season at this one. His time, 15:44, was his slowest of the season, but if you're going to post your slowest time of the season, it's pretty nice to be able to say it's a 15:44.
In the Division 1 and 2 division, Brophy College Preparatory edged Flagstaff for a nicely-contested team title, and that was a very good sign for the Flagstaff team we haven't seen the last couple of weeks, at least not the regular varsity version. They're evidently back on track and aiming at a state title sometime later this season. Gilbert was back in fourth place, but without Terrence Keyes (Javier Garcia took the individual title in Keyes' absence). Assuming there's no injury in play there, that could readily be interpreted as an encouraging result for Gilbert. Cibola showed well in third, plenty high enough to earn them "watch this team" status going forward.
In the Division 3 and 4 race, Cesar Diaz's run of meet titles came to an end, done in by both Barney and Thomas Koska of North Phoenix Prep. Koska had double the fun because his NPP teammates finished the job he started and won the meet title. But it was very close with Chandler Preparatory. We keep an eye on both teams going forward.
We'll use this opportunity to dub the Carl Hayden guys as the sneakiest team of the season for Arizona. Why sneaky? Well, not for any negative reasons. But, one, they were not at all on the radar screen to start the season. Two, they won this meet with nobody in the top 15. The top teams in Arizona were indeed somewhere else (many taking the weekend off) this past weekend, but you can't help but stand up and take notice of what Carl Hayden did. For those for whom pack time is the holy grail of cross country, they run a very nice pack. Their pack won this meet.
Liberty, led by sophomore meet titleist Ryan Denhof, took second, five points behind Carl Hayden.
I checked for items of compelling small-school interest emerging out of this meet, but came up empty-handed in that regard.
Jor Trujillo-Lira won this one in 15:58. As wins go, it was convincing. I'm guessing Jor is short for Jorge, though I've never thought much about the need to shorten Jorge. Trujillo-Lira runs for Rio Rico, a school that has some history of runners who finish first.
But, Rio Rico wasn't at the top of the team pile. That honor belonged to Canyon del Oro, who edged out Buena and Marana for the distinction. CdO was led by a 2-3 finish from Sean Jacobsen and Ethan Fritzinger. I should also note that Salpointe Catholic still managed a fourth-place team finish with a B team. Myles Floyd of Pusch Ridge Christian finished fifth individually for smallest-school honors. PRC was well out of the team hunt, however.
Caleb Anson of Snowflake edged out Micah Slivers of Ganado for the individual title. And, not as a total shock, Snowflake repeated that edge over Ganado in the team scoring. Holbrook managed a very close third to Ganado's second. Snowflake won on the strength of parking all five scoring runners in the top 15. It takes a pretty small meet for that to be less than a winning strategy.
Thatcher was a bit on the side of dominant at this one, starting with Joby Rojas. If you will reference the comment above about Snowflake squeezing all five of their scorers into the top 15, Thatcher trumped that performance with all five of their scorers in the top nine (and six of the top 10). That, too, gets it done--and this time with an exclamation mark.
With Rincon University and Tucson Magnet completing the vertices of the triangle, Flowing Wells took home the team title--always a good thing to do at your home meet. Joseph Moreno of Tucson Magnet, however, took individual honors and was the only finisher under 18 minutes.