Guam all-island cross-country meet: Panthers on the prowl
Published: October 14, 2012
Here’s a breakdown of the Independent Interscholastic Athletic Association of Guam all-island cross-country meet last Thursday at Nimitz Hill Golf Course. Analysis provided by Bruce Carrick, longtime Pacific cross-country and track and field observer and gatekeeper of Pacific records at Athletic.net. Times and placements provided by Athletic.net.
Guam High's double victory capped a very successful season, the first all-island title sweep by the Panthers in the school’s 15-year history.
The boys had only lost once in dual competition, to John F. Kennedy the previous week. Despite averaging 15 seconds slower than JFK for the scoring front five, the Guam High boys turned the tables for a one-point victory at the championship. Harvest Christian Academy was a distant third in the 10-team field.
The Guam High girls finished their unblemished dual season with a six-point margin over JFK and another six points over George Washington. The margin of victory would have been much greater, but JFK gained a lot of points in the fifth runner and showed very strong in the non-counting sixth and seventh runners. Even without their first two runners, JFK would have finished third.
Individual winners were John Aquino of JFK and Taylor Fell of St. John’s. Taylor's brother and boys' contender Brandon Fell did not compete, but teammates Jon O'Dell and Allie Lai finished second and fourth in the boys and girls races, respectively. The winning times for the 5,000-meter course at Nimitz were 18:40 and 22:35.
The times are not particularly competitive, but they may be indicative of a slow course. Aquino's time would rank 50th in the Pacific at 5,000 meters, and freshman Fell's time would be 37th. Now that Fell is age- and grade-eligible to compete at next week's Asia-Pacific Invitational, St. John’s may have hopes of four individual ribbons.
The key for the Guam High boys was that despite yielding five points to JFK in the first three runners, the fourth and fifth runners gained six points on their JFK counterparts. In the dual meeting of the two schools earlier in October, the fourth and fifth Panthers runners had been beaten. At the championship, Guam's freshman Joseph Mull finished a stronger fourth position, but senior Cameron Crotchet sealed the win by moving up to the fifth position and beating a pack of three JFK runners.
A strong front four (2, 3, 7, 11) built a nearly insurmountable lead for Guam High's girls, to prevail over JFK's more even team. This formidable line-up spells trouble for everyone else in the next two meets, API and Far East, where only the top four will score, and a weak fifth will be no handicap.
The concern for Guam High could be that lead runners Alison Bowman and Emma Martin are about 90 seconds back of Taylor Fell's relatively slow mark of 22:35. They can hope that the slow times will prove to be meaningless, which will probably become clear when off-islanders from Korea and Japan join at next week's API.
