PMS Cross Country Team Opens 2013 Season

The PMS cross country team opened up their 2013 seaon, the same way they closed last year with some impressive performances. This is the eighth year for this program sponsored by the Piedmont Recreation Department and the 2012 team was not only the largest in terms of participants, 110, but also captured the most league championship titles of any school with three team championships. This year's team is equal in size, and based on the first two meets of the season could be a contender in several categories. 

 

On September 23, the team ventured to Golden Gate Field in Albany for their first meet of the season with 60 runners in 6th, 7th & 8th grades. The highlight of the meet was the girls 7&8th grade race of 2000 meters as the 2012 league individual winner from Albany Middle faced off with 7th grader Erin Hong from Piedmont. The first 3 girls finished within 2 seconds of each other. 7^th grader Erin Hong was just behind the leader from Albany and her time of 6:49.6 is a new school record for GGF. In fact she is the first Piedmont girl, 7 or 8^th grader to break the 7 minute barrier at this course. Our next placer was Margo Donahue in 6^th place (this was her first cross country race), and a time of 7:12.6 and following her was Elie Cole in 8^thplace with a time of 7: 20.9. In the 7&8th grade boys race, our first finisher in 6^th place was 7^th grader Lorand Cheng in a time of 6:45.2. This broke the 7^th grade boys PMS record for GGF. Finally, in the 6th grade girls race, Piedmont placed one runner in the top 10 with Maggie Black placing 5th in a time of 6:44 for the 1 mile distance. 

 

On Thursday, September 26, Piedmont hosted its annual "home" meet at Temescal Park in Oakland. This was the largest meet in league history with 545 runners from 20 schools with the biggest contingent from Piedmont with 90 runners. In the first race of the day, 6th grade girls, Piedmont had the first 5 finishers in the race and placed 6 runners in the top 10. In cross country a perfect score is “15” and if the meet had been scored that’s what we would have achieved. Josie Gross-Whitaker led the way in a new Piedmont 6^th grade girl’s course record of 7:26.5. The old record of 7:29, dates to 2006, the first year of the program. In 2^ndplace was Fiona Hunter in 7:34.7, 3^rd place was Maggie Black in 7:38.4, followed by Maria Del Rosario-Chan in 7:42.6 , and 5^th place was Jihae Oh in the same time as Maria. Our 6th runner in the top 10 was 9^th place Zazie Huml in 8:07.2.  

 

 

In the 6^th grade boys race, we had a total of 16 boys take part. In an exciting race down to the wire, Josh Berg from Piedmont finished in 2^nd place with a time of 7:13.5, only 5 seconds behind the first place runner. Our other top ten finisher was Max Podell in a time of 7:37.1 fro 10th place. The 7&8th grade race saw another outstanding performance with six Piedmont girls in the top 10. The first place finisher overall was Erin Hong with another school course record in a time of 7:21.1. Coming in 4^th place overall in her first cross country race was Clarissa Lam with a time of 7:34.1 and right behind her in 5^th place was Margo Donahue 7:35.3. 7^th place overall was Ellie Coleman in 7:56.1, and following her in 9^th place was Isa Harrison 8:05.5 and Georgie Pease with a 10^th place finish and 8:05.9. The last race was 7&8th grade boys and Piedmont had a solid showing our first finisher overall was in 11^th place for Vincent Titterton and a time of 7:33.6 , followed in 12^thplace Andrew Stoddard in 7:33.7. Then Piedmont runners finished 14^ththrough 16^th places, respectively it was Aidan Dixon in 7:35.1, Toby Fischer in 7:35.3, and Ryan Fitzgerald in 7:36.2.