PMS Cross Country Team Hosts Meet at Lake Temescal

On September 27, 2012, the PMS cross country team hosted its annual meet for the East Bay League schools at Temescal Regional Park in North Oakland. Over 350 runners from 15 different schools participated in the meet. It was a picture perfect day, not too warm and nicely chilly in the shade.

Piedmont Middle School is still at the leading edge of technology, being the only school in the league using chip timing to record race results. This technology makes use of small plastic "chips" or bands worn on the runner shoe laces and as they cross the finish line their time place is automatically recorded. This means results are available virtually instantaneously with no manual entry required.

Four different races were held during the meet starting with the 6th grade Girls race. Erin Hong did PMS super proud finishing first with a time of 7:43.5, a full 12 seconds faster than the 2^nd place runner. Josephine Gross Whittaker and Naomi Hollinger also finished amazingly with respective times of 8:05.6 and 8:05.8.

The next race was the 6th grade boys. Piedmont had 5 boys finish in the top 12 of this race! They were lead by Lorand Cheng in a time of 7:25.6 for a 5^th place finish.  Henry Cooper, Dylan Thayer, Sam Von Herrmann, and Mitch Curtis rounded out the rest of the top 12 finishers, all coming in faster than 7:47.

The 3rd race of the day was the 7 & 8th grade girls. Leading much of the race, coming in 2^nd place and setting a new PMS 8^th grade girl’s course record in 7:34.7 was Skyler Liu. The two other top 12 finishers from PMS were Leah Kochendoerfer in 8^th place and Minnie Cooper in 11^th place.

The 7 & 8th grade boys race was the largest group, having 132 participants. Blake Gruendl was the top PMS finisher in this race, coming in 8^th place with a time of 6:50.5. He also set a new school course record for 8^th grade boys and broke the old record by almost 20 seconds.  Daniel Jones and Nick Loduca were among the top 20 finishers with times under 7:08. 

Congrats to all who gave it their all and raced. Much thanks to all the volunteers who helped the race go smoothly.

For more information about the team and to review complete results and pictures, go the the team website at: www.pmscc.com