Kanto cross-country finals: Red Devil of a record day
Published: October 13, 2012
Here’s a breakdown of the Kanto Plain Association of Secondary Schools cross-country final and invitational meet, held on a gorgeous Saturday morning at Tama Hills Recreation Center. Analysis provided by Bruce Carrick, longtime Pacific cross-country and track observer and gatekeeper of Pacific records at Athletic.net. Times and placements provided by Athletic.net.
Start with the five-year-old girls course record being broken … by a seventh-grader at Seisen International School. Then comes Nile C. Kinnick’s girls’ first team title since 1985, and a first-ever gold medal by a Yokota girls runner.
Saturday’s 2012 Kanto Finals were all they were cracked up to be. It began with Seisen’s Brittani Shappell clocking the 2.1-mile girls course in 12 minutes, 50 seconds. That shaved eight seconds off the existing high-school record set by Anna Novick of St. Maur International in 2007, coached by Kinnick’s current mentor Rich Ringling. Shappell already holds the Pacific’s 3,000-meter record, 11:06.
As far as future prospects, Seisen’s junior varsity girls took the first six places in their race, and International School of the Sacred Heart took four of the next five, indicating the Symbas’ team depth. American School In Japan middle-school and JV boys dominated those two races, again foreshadowing future strength.
But for the present, Kinnick’s girls rule and Yokota has reason to celebrate. For the first time ever, a female Yokota champion was crowned – freshman Samantha Arnold. She won with a time of 13:14.1, which ranks her seventh on the all-time list. Eighteen seconds later, Tanya Riordan of ASIJ finished, then Kinnick placed the next two, Carydaliz Fontanez and Elisha Dareing.
Kinnick (54 points), with its first win since 1985, was followed by ASIJ (67), Seisen (75), ISSH (92) and Yokota (93). In upcoming meets with four-place scoring, Kinnick will be expanding its lead, as Kate Greathouse (14th) was five places ahead of ASIJ's fourth runner. The top four teams were virtually identical in 1-5 elapsed time and spread. Kinnick's spread was a mere 68 seconds.
The weather was great for running, and the runners responded, with 70 percent of the 143 varsity runners bettering their personal bests (note that everyone runs on this same course many times, so a PR is quite meaningful). More tellingly, from 1999 to 2011, an average of 4.2 girls dipped under 14:00 (2.1 miles, or 3,305 meters). On Saturday, 12 girls did that, the best-ever showing. The boys race was nearly as impressive, with the 13-year average being 4.4 boys under 16:00 (2.9miles, or 4,417 meters), and Saturday's number was nine, one shy of the record in 2010.
Robert Beard and Aaron Russ finished 1-2 for Kinnick’s boys, Beard winning in 15:17.5, a mark that would place him around 20th on the all-time list. St. Mary's went 3-4 (Masanari Yoshida and Koh Terai), with strong finishes for the other three to take the team title with 59 points. Yokota scored 71, but had a tighter 1-5 pack, at 69 seconds to St. Mary's 77.5 seconds.
Kinnick was the only team with three medal winners, but paid the price for the gap down to fourth and fifth. However, their lead runners did beat their ASIJ counterparts, and ASIJ's fourth and fifth only managed to close the scoring to a margin of two points, for fourth place. Yokota’s, St. Mary's and ASIJ’s fourth runners finished in the top 18, indicating that they will do strongly in the upcoming score-four meets. Kinnick's 1-2-9 finish will be hard to beat, however.
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Footnote on Shappell's record-breaking run: It would be easy to believe that Shappell, already fleet of foot at the tender age of 12, will only get better as she progresses into high school. Her stated personal goal is to run 30 seconds faster.
Coaches sounded repeated words of warning Saturday that adolescent bodies develop differently, and there's always the possibility that by the time they reach their upperclassmen years, they might not be as speedy.
Watching Shappell's approach to the finish on Saturday was remindful of former Zama American star Andrew Quallio, a former two-time Far East champion, now an Air Force officer. His stride was relentless, as was his training regimen.
Shappell's father, Mike, teaches and coaches tennis at Seisen, so I doubt they're going anywhere. Should be fun to watch her develop and decrease those times.
