10 Championships & 4 NXN Berths on the Line

The top 10 individuals from the 2014 D2 race are gone - 9 of them were seniors, and Garrett Reynolds has moved into Division 1.  That means the door is wide open as far as the individual championship contenders go, and it could be Dylan Scarsone (Canyon Anaheim Hills) that walks through it.  After a convincing win at the Southern Section finals, Scarsone has to be brimming with confidence, while some of the earlier contenders in the division have struggled lately.  Runners like Ryan Tate (Saugus), Andrew Clusserath (Rocklin), and Stephen Khan (Ayala) all posted eye-opening performances at some point during the season, but none won their sectional.  Meanwhile, the Southern Section can also claim Cole Hoff (Agoura) and Scarsone's teammate Chance Lamberth as potential contenders.  Look to the Bay Area for two more strong challengers: Andy Ehrenburg (Redwood) is the North Coast champ and the top returner from last year's race, and Justin Robison (Lynbrook) had a monster race at Crystal Springs while winning the Central Coast finals.

Scarsone and Lamberth aren't just individual contenders, either - they lead a Canyon (Anaheim Hills) team that has a legitimate shot at the championship.  The Comanches will have to overcome Southern Section champion West Torrance to win, something they could not do last weekend.  In fact, all 7 advancing teams from Mt. SAC look like potential top-10 squads at Woodward Park, setting the stage for another potential Southern Section domination of this division.  Mira Costa grades out particularly well in our virtual meet, but they barely held off Loyola and Claremont last Saturday.  West Ranch has had some strong performances this season, and let's not forget that Agoura finished 2nd in Division 3 last year.

Who could potentially break up this potent Southern Section cartel?  Bella Vista looked strong in taking the Sac Joaquin finals, and St. Francis (Mountain View) emerged from an intense Aside from those two, all of the section finals races in this division were highly competitive with relatively high scores and no dominant teams.  That doesn't bode well for the state's ability to deny the Southern Section another multi-team sweep of the top 6, as they had in 2014.

The battle between Saugus and Serrano has raged all season, and it should come to a peak this weekend.  Saugus is the defending state champion and also won last weekend's Southern Section title narrowly.  Serrano was 4th last year but has been neck-and-neck with their rival all season, as evidenced by their scant 4-point loss at Mt. SAC last Saturday.  The next group of teams was over 70 points behind these two, making them the favorites to battle it out for the title in Fresno.  That second cluster includes Claremont, Mira Costa, and Capistrano Valley, all of which are capable of making the top 5 at Woodward Park.

Interestingly, the top non-Southern Section contenders also battled in pairs in their respective section finals. Bella Vista defeated St. Francis (Sacramento) by only 9 points in the SJS finals two weekends ago (which could mean that the teams will be better-rested than their counterparts from SoCal).  Granada won by 15 over Redwood in the North Coast Meet of Champions, as the two teams pulled away from the rest of the field.  Finally, Westview held off Mt. Carmel by 5 points for the San Diego Section title.  If the section results hold true, expect Bella Vista and Granada to crack the top 4, and then there will be quite a scrum for the remaining spots in the top 10.  However, it's not at all out of the question to see the second-place team from any of those sections run well and move up.

Individually, this should be Amanda Gehrich's race to lose.  The Tesoro senior is the top returner from this race in 2014, and she has dominated the Southern Section all season, with her only losses coming to out-of-state runners at Woodbridge and Nike Portland.  In fact, the closest anyone has come to beating Gehrich was last weekend, when Claire Graves (Citrus Valley) pushed her to the limit before losing by only 4 seconds.  Nicole Zielinski (Canyon Anaheim Hills) also has a chance to make the top 5 this weekend, and Stephanie Ortega (Segerstrom) was 5th in the state last year (although she has struggled a bit this season).  With only three clear Southern Section individual contenders, that provides an opportunity to runners like Megan McCandless (Granada), the North Coast champion, and Gillian Meeks (Gunn), who won the Central Coast finals.  The San Diego Section sends us two potential top-10 runners in Nia Akins (Rancho Bernardo) and Alex Calegari (Poway), and you can't forget that Kendall Derry (Bella Vista) was a Foot Locker finalist in 2014 (and her season best of 18:14 came on a challenging course).  Glennis Murphy (Redwood) should be in the mix, as well, and freshman Devianna Salcedo (McFarland) could be a dark horse candidate in this race after cruising to a 30-second win in the Central Section finals.