Sunday, September 28, 2008

The Road to HPA - by Anonymous

"Somebody may beat me, but they are going to bleed to do it". - Steve Prefontaine

That is maybe what it will take to either win the individual or team championship at this year's Hawaii State Cross Country Championship with yet another #1 being beaten at the Kaiser Invitational at the CORP course.

Mililani High defeated Kamehameha by a mere 1 point, 54 to 55. On the individual front it will come down to who wants it the most and who can run the HPA course the best. At the moment it looks like either Kaiser's Sara Clapp or King Kekaulike's Bailey Massenburg. Both ran on hilly courses this past weekend. Massenburg recorded a 19:09 at the Ironwood hills golf course on Molokai. Clapp ran a 19:19 at CORP. This week the nod goes to Massenburg.

This week's team Ranking (Pac-5 will not run at the state meet as a team.)
  1. Mililani
  2. Kamehameha
  3. Punahou
  4. Seabury Hall
  5. 'Iolani
Individual Rankings for this week.

1. Bailey Massenburg
2. Sarah Clapp Kaiser
3. Julie Besenbruch Pac-5
4. Haley Abing Pac-5
5. Jenna Wong Iolani
6. Kristin Ali Keith Mililani
7. Hailey Grossman Seabury Hall
8. Ashlee Jimenez Kamehameha
9. Julia Brand Punahou
10. Noelani Mikami Kamehameha

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

Good job with the rankings. You have to consider the Kamehameha girl that won the JV race. Plug her in the Varsity race with that time and Kamehameha wins easily. Also, Punahou always seems to peakjust right at States and they have some impressive JV runners that will help to keep the Varsity in the hunt. Massenberg vs. Clapp should be a great race!

MrESManHI said...

With the addition of the Kamehameha JV girl, they pull ahead of Mililani 53 to 56, which is very close. Strong performances by personnel from either team could be the difference in winning the State Championship. Mililani's Keith has shown earlier that she is capable of running times at Clapp's of Massenburg's level, which would just make up the difference in points.
Also, the addition of Neighbor Island, JV and other top runners who did not compete this week, may become spoilers in the team championship race as they take places away from Kamehameha and Mililani's other scoring runners.

fit4life said...

Mililani had one of its top 5 runners out with an injury and several others slowed by injury as well. Both teams are deep as Mililani's 6th runner just edged out Kam's 6th and 7th followed by Mililani's 7th. No other team comes close with it's top 7.
It will come down to which team can keep its best runners healthy and do the best job at tapering in preperation for HPA.

Anonymous said...

Excellent point about the missing top runners from around the State not in the Kaiser meet. Gap time from runners 1-5 becomes a much bigger deal in larger, more competitive meets. An yes, Keith has demonstrated the ability ro run with Clapp which could be huge and the differance in points between her and Jiminez (Kamehameha) could be the differance. It'll be fun watching them in the next few weeks to see what progres if any is made by the girls on the teams.

Walter Mosch said...

Don't count out Tialana Greenwell of Honoka'a who ran a 19:08 last week at Kealakehe. She also was held back at the HPA meet in order to pace some of the slower Honoka'a runners. IMHO, she is most definitely amongst the top 5 individuals in the state - having beat Jenna Wong by 35 seconds at the Kamehameha-Hawai'i meet.