{"id":2909,"date":"2009-11-06T07:09:00","date_gmt":"2009-11-06T07:09:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/lbpost.com\/articles\/sports\/poly-sweeps-moore-league-xc-finals\/"},"modified":"2009-11-06T07:09:00","modified_gmt":"2009-11-06T07:09:00","slug":"poly-sweeps-moore-league-xc-finals","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/sports\/poly-sweeps-moore-league-xc-finals","title":{"rendered":"Poly Sweeps Moore League XC Finals"},"content":{"rendered":"


Photo by Becky Bershtel<\/em><\/p>\n

\n

\"\"It was a memorable day at Heartwell Park on Thursday for the Moore League 2009 Cross Country Finals, as Poly defended both their boys’ and girls’ titles, and Lakewood’s Sean Graham ran the race of his high school career.<\/p>\n

The Heartwell course essentially consists of three laps around the Clark-Bellflower block of the park\u2014by the time the runners in the boys’ varsity finished the first mile, Graham and Wilson’s Andrew Godsil had already begun to pull away from the pack.  <\/span>After that, Graham wasted no time, pulling away from Godsil and the rest of the pack, and running the second half of the race with a ten-second cushion, before finishing first with a time of 15:17.  <\/span>He was followed by Christian Penn and Sean Price of Poly, his teammate Anthony Perry, and Godsil.<\/p>\n

Graham, a senior, was running the last league meet of his high school career\u2014and got his first win.  <\/span>When asked if he was surprised that he not only won, but won handily (just over 15 seconds separated he and Penn), Graham shook his head.  <\/span>“I was expecting to\u2014although, I always expect to and it hadn’t happened before.”  <\/span>Graham said illness held him back for both of the previous two league meets.  <\/span>“I just felt like I had to make up for it\u2014I’ve been training so hard.”<\/p>\n

As a team, Poly placed four of the top eight runners, good enough to defend their boys’ league title.  <\/span>Poly boys’ coach Mike Fillipow said it was nice for his team to have their original roster back for the first time this year.  <\/span>“It was the first time we’ve had Eric [Riehl] since September, and the first time we’ve had Carl [Price] since Summer\u2014we’ve been anxiously awaiting their return.”  <\/span><\/p>\n

The girls’ race, as expected, was initially contested between the league’s Fab Four\u2014Poly’s Dynasty Gammage, Millikan’s Paisley Pettway, Lakewood’s Kirstyn Nold, and Wilson’s Haley Kirk.  <\/span>The four kept pace with each other for the first mile, at which point Gammage started stepping it up a bit and expanding the slim lead she’d held.  <\/span>Gammage lost her first ever league meet three weeks ago when illness kept her from finishing at Discovery Well in Signal Hill.  <\/span>“It definitely left a bad taste in my mouth,” she said.<\/p>\n

Pushing herself to not only take the title, but to break her own league girls’ record, Gammage won the race by nearly 30 seconds, setting a new record by being the first Moore League runner to break the 18-minute mark, finishing in 17:52, with and average mile time of 5:57.<\/p>\n

The biggest surprise of the race was that her teammate Tia Leake, a senior running her final league meet, finished right behind her.  <\/span>After that it was Pettway, Nold, and Kirk rounding out the top five.  <\/span>The one-two punch of Gammage and Leake helped put Poly over the top, winning their record-tying sixth straight girls’ title, matching Wilson’s streak from 1983-1988.  <\/span>“It’s definitely exciting,” said Gammage, who felt good about her team’s chances when she turned around after crossing the finish line to see Leake approaching.  <\/span>“We always talk about getting that trophy back.”<\/p>\n

Poly girls’ coach Nate Bershtel said, “I thought they did really well\u2014and they accomplished what they set out to do.”<\/p>\n

While Wilson knew that both titles were up for grabs, there were no hung heads in the Bruins camp.  <\/span>Assistant coach Casey McCombs said, “There weren’t a lot of surprises\u2014we did what we came here to do.  <\/span>This is one of the toughest leagues in Southern California.”<\/p>\n

Poly, Wilson, and Millikan will move on to CIF as teams\u2014only three XC teams advance because not all seven high schools finished a full varsity group.  <\/span>Nold will also advance as an individual because of her high finish.  <\/span>Congrats to all the runners, and stay tuned to LBPOSTsports.com for CIF updates!<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

With a strong performance at Heartwell Park, Poly defended both their boys’ and girls’ league titles, while Lakewood’s Sean Graham turned heads by taking the boys’ individual title.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":33,"featured_media":16951,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"newspack_sponsor_sponsorship_scope":"","newspack_sponsor_native_byline_display":"inherit","newspack_sponsor_native_category_display":"inherit","newspack_sponsor_underwriter_style":"inherit","newspack_sponsor_underwriter_placement":"inherit","inline_featured_image":false,"newspack_ads_suppress_ads":false,"newspack_popups_has_disabled_popups":"","_":"","_author_alias":"","cap-aim":"","cap-description":"","cap-display_name":"","cap-first_name":"","cap-jabber":"","cap-last_name":"","cap-linked_account":"","cap-newspack_employer":"","cap-newspack_job_title":"","cap-newspack_phone_number":"","cap-newspack_role":"","cap-user_email":"","cap-user_login":"","cap-website":"","cap-yahooim":"","newspack_article_summary":"","newspack_email_html":"","newspack_email_type":"","newspack_featured_image_position":"","newspack_hide_page_title":"","newspack_hide_updated_date":false,"newspack_post_subtitle":"","newspack_show_share_buttons":"","newspack_sponsor_byline_prefix":"","newspack_sponsor_disclaimer_override":"","newspack_sponsor_flag_override":"","newspack_sponsor_only_direct":"","newspack_sponsor_url":"","newspack_article_summary_title":"Overview:","newspack_show_updated_date":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"newspack_spnsrs_tax":[],"coauthors":[],"class_list":["post-2909","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-sports","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2909","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/33"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2909"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2909\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/16951"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2909"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2909"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2909"},{"taxonomy":"newspack_spnsrs_tax","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/newspack_spnsrs_tax?post=2909"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=2909"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}