LOWER LAKE — Six Sigma Ranch and Winery hosted Lake County’s first Coastal Mountain Conference race of the 2021 fall cross country season Wednesday as the Middletown Mustangs and Lower Lake Trojans ran in 104-degree heat on the 2.9 mile course.
A third team scheduled to compete, Kelseyville High School, was a no-show.
“They didn’t contact me, they may have talked to my AD,” Middletown head coach and meet director Taylor Tiraterra said. “I don’t know where they were.”
While Middletown and Lower Lake both run their home meets at Six Sigma, Middletown was the host school on Wednesday. The Mustangs had just enough runners — five boys and five girls — to form complete teams in both divisions. With Kelseyville not present, Tiraterra decided to run the boys and girls together in a single race instead of the standard format of junior varsity boys and girls in one race followed by the varsity boys in a second.
Lower Lake head coach Jenna Krick brought six runners to the race – four boys and two girls.
“Four of them are first-time runners,” Krick said of newcomers Dylan Watson and Skyler Day among the boys and Madison MaCall-Groves and Ava Andrews among the girls.
The team’s two veterans, Daniel Bratton and Jose Hernandez, placed one-two among the boys, Bratton sprinting down the stretch to cross the finish line in 19 minutes, 21 seconds, with Hernandez not far behind at 19:43.
The temperature at race time was 104 degrees, which proved quite a challenge for rookies and veterans alike. There were more than a few wobbly legs at race’s end given the ultra-hot conditions, and at least one woozy runner needed to take a seat for a bit while recuperating.
While cross county didn’t lose its 2020 season to the COVID-19 pandemic (it was moved to the late winter and early spring of this year) unlike all the other fall and winter sports, there has been plenty of turnover from the spring season, which ended in mid-April, to the start of the current fall season. In addition to attrition through graduation, many of the spring runners were only competing in cross country because their sports of choice were canceled. Those athletes have since switched back to either volleyball, soccer or football.
Even so, Tiraterra and Krick, both second-year coaches, were optimistic about the season ahead and what it holds for their respective teams. Both expect to pick up additional runners in the coming days.
“Honestly, I’m very pleased,” Tiraterra said of his team’s performance in the first of eight conference meets this season. “I’m really excited about some of our younger runners.”
Runners such as freshman Catarina Barriga, who placed third in the girls race behind teammates Nicole Pyzer and Maya Leonard, and freshman Caden Gotz, who came in fourth among the boys, following Lower Lake’s Bratton, Hernandez and Middletown’s Javier Perez across the finish line.
“Caden is just a freshman and has a ton of improvement ahead of him,” Tiraterra said.
Boys
After Bratton and Hernandez in the boys race, Perez came in third in 23:43. Gotz was next at 29:59, and Middletown’s Bryton Caviness rounded out the top five at 30:25.
Other boys finishers were Middletown’s Dean McComas in 38:04, Lower Lake’s Dylan Watson in 39:32, Middletown’s Baron Chang in 39:49, and Lower Lake’s Skyler Day in 46:21.
Girls
Pyzer’s winning time among the girls was 25:42 and Leonard and Catarina Barriga were next at 26:21 and 28:47, respectively. MaCall-Groves of Lower Lake came in fourth in 30:22 and Middletown’s Issy Barriga completed the top five at 33:21.
Rounding out the girls field were Lower Lake’s Andrews in 34:08 and Middletown newcomer Olivia Gallagher in 37:16.
Schedule
Lower Lake hosts Clear Lake and St. Helena next Wednesday at Six Sigma. Middletown hits the road to face Roseland University Prep and Cloverdale at the Asti course just south of Cloverdale. Racing at both venues is scheduled to begin at 3:30 p.m.
