This Team Inspires Their Coach: Running Success & Taking Care of Each

COMMUNITY NEWS This Team Inspires Their Coach

Running Success & Taking Care of Each Other

By Todd Hoffman

The 2021 cross country season is winding down and Scotts Valley High School’s team is getting ready for league and beyond. It has been great this year to have a normal season with our dual meets and big invitationals. Our team started training with big goals of both girls and boys teams winning a league title and making it to the California state meet.

The boys team, lead by captains Jeremy Kain and Austin George, have been running strong this year. They have led our team to an undefeated league season along with Ryder Brabo, Aiden Boothby, Jack Brownfield, Jonah Verinsky, Mason Lantz, and Drew Bryson.

They also have run well in the invitationals. This year they ran at the Woodbridge Invitational in the sweepstakes race and placed 19th as a team (first division 4 team). They also ran in the championship race at Clovis Invitational and placed 15th (again, the first division 4 team). Both races they had to be invited to run in those races and were running against the best teams in the nation.

The team won the Artichoke Invitational in Half Moon Bay and Bellarmine Invitational in Sunnyvale.

The girls team, lead by Captains Greta Feague, Jessica Hill-Roddick, and Rafie Putnam, have been running great. They finished the league dual meet season undefeated with Amber Boothby, Ashlyn Boothby, Diana Alivov, Dresden Brabo, and Megan Wu.

At invitationals, the girls have run very well while dealing with injuries. In October, they placed 6th in the small school division at Clovis and won the Artichoke Invitational and Bellarmine Invitational. Ashlyn Boothby placed 1st in those races while her sister Amber was unable to run due to injury. The other girls really stepped it up to cover Amber not running.

Moreover, our Frosh/Soph and JV boys and girls are doing great. We have 43 runners on our team and they are training and racing hard. This year, we have 19 seniors, and our younger runners are developing well and will be strong next year.

The next race is the SCCAL finals Nov. 4 at Pinto Lake County Park. Then on to CCS Championships Nov. 13 and the State meet, Thanksgiving weekend, Nov. 27.

Scotts Valley’s Varsity Cross Country girls and boys teams at Clovis Invitational.

I’m so proud of how this team came together. They are so connected, take care of each other and have a fun time while working hard.

Our captains do a great job of inspiring each person on the team. Every person on the team will help others to achieve their goals. They also care for the other teams and are cheering for each runner on the course.

Our first meet against Aptos was right after the fatal stabbing there and our kids wrote notes of encouragement and put them on Cliff bars to give to Aptos runners.

Yesterday at our meet against San Lorenzo Valley, our runners wanted to honor Cash Ebright (who was swept into the ocean at Laguna Creek Beach this year), and got headbands for our team and SLV’s team to wear during the race -- Cash always wore a headband when he ran.

While our runners are running well and having success, they see the most important part of this sport is supporting each other and the other teams.

It is all about sportsmanship and being good people and this team inspires me every day.

Winning a league, CCS or state title would be a great way to end the season, but for me, the big win is seeing how this team became a family, supports each person on our team or other teams, and has fun while running hard. n