Stanford Invitational Meet Prevew

Stanford Invitational
Albert Caruana

The first ever Stanford Invitational was held in 1974 on a Thursday (October 3rd). The course was 2.8 miles long (hand written map below) and was also held on the Stanford golf course thanks to meet director, Menlo Atherton coach, Plato Yanicks. You can check out the results from that meet at this LINK thanks to Central Coast Section historian, Hank Lawson. When I competed in the meet in the mid 80s, the meet was held on a Monday and the course back then included a hill that was fairly challenging. German Fernandez established the course record on a different course in 2007 at 14:42 during his incredible senior season. He was the only runner to break 15 minutes that year. The first year for the current course configuration was the following year in 2008. Ammar Moussa of Arcadia (SS) established the new record of 14:37 in 2010 and that record was broken last year by another Arcadia runner, Phillip Rocha (winning time of 14:32.5). Before 2008, Marie Lawrence of Reno held the course record with her 17:06 in 2006. Once the new course was established, Carrie Verdon of Campolindo (NCS) became the first girl to break 17 minutes by running 16:58.8 in 2011. The following year, Amy-Eloise Neale of Glacier Peak lowered the course record to 16:51.4. Fiona O'Keeffe Davis (SJS) and now current Stanford Cardinal runner, ran 16:39.8 in 2014 and an even faster 16:32.1 last season.

For this Saturday, the races will take place in the following order and you can see the time schedule below. It looks like with the Clovis Invitational taking place the following weekend, many of the top teams from the southern part of the state will save on their travel budget by staying closer to home. The weather will however cooperate with a projected temperature under 70 degrees for most of the day.

Division 4
The 2015 Stanford Invitational Division IV individual boys' winner, Callum Bolger of San Luis Obispo (SS) is back this year but he will be racing in the loaded seeded race. The fastest returner from last year's race will be Trent Robinett of Oaks Christian (SS) who finished in 7th place with a time of 15:45.2, just ahead of Kellen O'Neill of Arcata (NCS) in 10th place (15:53.7). Robert Miranda of Menlo finished in 12th place last year with a time of 15:58.0 and will be making his season debut here. Miranda was voted as the NorCal sophomore runner of the year at the end of the 2015 season. Team wise, San Luis Obispo is very highly ranked in the Southern Section but without their ace lead runner, that would leave Oaks Christian and Laguna Beach as the top teams from down south. San Lorenzo Valley (CCS) is a young upcoming team that will be looking to make a major statement at this meet under first year coach, Jay Avenmarg.