ILH XC Musings

The Mid-Pacific campus is a beautiful place for a cross-country meet and I'd like to see a meet there each year. Considering it was the first meet there, it was relatively trouble-free, but maybe a few things could be done to make it better.

1. Simplify the route. This was a very complicated route which was exacerbated by some incorrect instructions given out by volunteers.

2. Have course maps available at least one week before the race. This is easier than it sounds. I will gladly post any course maps on the USATF of Hawaii site so that everyone can see them.

There were kids that took wrong turns yesterday that cost them quite a bit of time. I hate to see that happen.

So what happened yesterday? The Mid-Pac boys won the individual crowns in the Intermediate (Devin Furutani ) and Varsity divisions (Scott Motobu). A lone St. Louis runner (Kevin Donahue) won the JV division.

On the girls side, Maryknoll continues to dominate individually, but has too few athletes to compete as a team. Brie Adams and Claire Hann (both from Maryknoll) took 1st and 2nd in the intermediate division. Jenna Wong (Iolani) moved to the JV's for this week and responded with a very strong race to win, despite feeling a bit under the weather. In the varsity division, Haley Abing took the win as her teammate Julie Besenbruch had a scheduling conflict and had to miss the meet.

Teamwise, there were some interesting changes from the previous weeks.

Intermediate girls:

Iolani - 52
HBA - 54
Punahou - 69

JV Girls:

Kamehameha - 29
Iolani - 49
Punahou - 92

Varsity Girls:

Punahou - 36
Kamehameha - 48
Iolani - 86

Intermediate Boys:

Iolani - 40
MPI - 52
Kamehameha - 96

JV Boys:

Punahou - 33
Kamehameha - 45
Iolani - 80

Varsity Boys:

Kamehameha - 36
Iolani - 49
MPI - 79

For the girls, I say, welcome back to Kamehameha. I've been expecting them to show better than they did in the first 2 meets. They showed much better yesterday. Punahou is still the favorite but Kamehameha will challenge. Iolani suffered a big blow losing their top runner, Katie Pellitteri, to injury. We at Iolani are praying that she recovers in time to help us later in the season.

For the boys, it currently looks like a 2 team race with Kamehameha and Iolani the main combatants.

It's the Iolani Invitational at Kualoa Ranch this Saturday, 12pm. See the IXCI Invitational website for details.