It was the end of an amazing season on Saturday at the CIF finals at Mt. SAC college as the Los Alamitos High girls, “little blue wrecking crew” placed 12th overall. With more than 200 teams in Division I, it was an impressive finish.
It was the end of an amazing season on Saturday at the CIF finals at Mt. SAC college as the Los Alamitos High girls, “little blue wrecking crew” placed 12th overall. With more than 200 teams in Division I, it was an impressive finish.
Senior Claire Rainey (18:32), senior Sara Bass (18:40), freshman Nicole Bliss (18:50), junior Melissa Rios (19:16), junior Ashley Gardea-Molina (19:42), freshman Ashlyn Almacy (19:50), and senior Juliet Adams (20:31) put forth all they had to lead the Griffins.
“At the start of the season, we lost one of our top runners due to medical reasons and we were not expected to place higher than fifth in our league. Coach Jeff Tribole said. “Claire and Sara put this team on their backs early in the year and raised the bar and expectations of what was expected of the team. The underclassmen responded with the massive improvements thru the season, and we were able to make it to CIF prelims by upsetting other teams. Shocking so many, we continued on this magical road and made it to CIF finals.”
Tribole worked with assistant coach Susan Marie to get the relatively young squad competitive in a strong league and CIF division. Tribole credited Marie with getting the young runners ready to compete with some of the fastest girls in the nation.
“To get from our league finals to CIF finals, we had to tax the legs and today, the girls were running on fumes and courage,” Tribole said.
Although the season is over, the future looks bright for these runners and the program is moving forward faster than ever. Rainey and Bass have drawn interest from several colleges.
“Looking ahead, of the ten Los Alamitos girls that were at CIF finals today, 5 of them are freshmen and two are juniors.” Coach Marie said. “I also have one more girl that was just a few seconds behind our tenth runner, so watch out world.”