Week in Review: Sahlman surprise keys Newbury Park's runaway victory
Senior wins national title after better-known teammates struggle in Nike Cross Nationals
There was a surprise in the Nike Cross Nationals meet in Portland, Oregon on Saturday, but it wasn’t the fact that the Newbury Park High School boys’ cross country team rolled to a runaway victory—that was expected.
It also wasn’t surprising that a Newbury Park runner won the individual title as well.
However, no one, including individual champion Aaron Sahlman, figured beforehand that he was going to win the 5,000-meter race at Glendoveer Golf Course on a sunny but cold and breezy day.
“I just came into this race trying to get all-American,” Sahlman said in a post-race interview on the awards stands after setting a course record of 14 minutes 44.5 seconds. “That was my goal. Just stick with the top group and maybe try to push that last mile like I did. I was not, I did not, expect me to win.”
Sahlman, a senior who has track bests of 1:48.91 for 800 meters, 4:01.34 for the mile, and 8:48.28 for 3,200 meters, entered the race as the No. 8-ranked boys’ cross country runner in the nation by Dyestat.com. But he had been the No. 3 runner on the stellar Newbury Park team all season as his teammates, senior twins Lex and Leo Young, entered the meet as the No. 1- and 3-ranked competitors.
Sahlman had finished third, 13 seconds behind first-place Lex Young and six seconds behind runner-up Leo in the Division II race of the California Interscholastic Federation (CIF) State Cross Country Championships on Nov. 26. And earlier in the season, he had placed third, 27 and 21 seconds behind Leo and Lex, respectively, in the high-caliber Clovis Invitational on Oct. 8.
But on Saturday it was Sahlman who led Newbury Park to a 66-152 victory over runner-up Jesuit of Portland, as Leo and Lex Young had rare off races, finishing 11th in 14:58.2 and 35th in 15:36.8. Brayden Seymour finished 24th in 15:26.2 for Newbury Park and fellow senior Aaron Cantu placed 78th in 16:01.1 for the Panthers, whose 66-point total was the lowest in the history of the meet that began in 2004.
Junior Dev Doshi, Newbury Park’s No. 4 runner in the state meet, finished 101st in 16:16.3 after battling an illness for much of the week.
“Our mindset was to come here and just everybody executes,” said Seymour, a state high school cross country champion in Florida as a junior before moving to California last summer. “The sixth and seventh runners’ goal was to step up and work harder to replace [Dev]. We all knew that without [Dev] it was gonna be a lot harder. So we all just put in that extra shift and hit that extra gear today and it paid off.”
Sahlman led the race after the first quarter-mile, but Lex and Leo Young were running 1-2 after 600 meters and they led the field through the mile in 4:33.5. Sahlman was 15th in 4:36.4, but he began to work his way forward and was in third place – just behind the Youngs and just ahead of senior Tyrone Gorze of Crater High in Central Point, Oregon – by 2.8 kilometers.
Leo had a 1.2-second lead on Lex and a 1.5-second advantage over Sahlman and Gorze when he came through two miles in 9:27.8. But Lex became to drop back about a minute later and he was about to be absorbed by the chase pack 30 seconds after that.
That was around the same time Leo surged. He had a four-second lead over Gorze and Sahlman when he came through four kilometers in 11:50.2 as Lex was 11 seconds back in 13th place.
Leo Young appeared to have the victory well in hand with 600 meters left in the race, but Sahlman began to make up ground on him after that and Leo looked concerned when he glanced over his left shoulder as he labored up the last set of hills on the course.
Sahlman was quickly reeling in Leo at that point and he kept his eyes forward as he sped past him before cresting the final hill with a little more than 200 meters left in the race.
There was no catching Sahlman after that as his winning time of 14:44.5 broke the course record of 14:52.3 that Nico Young, the older brother of Leo and Lex, had set in 2019 when he led Newbury Park to its first National Cross title.
Junior Daniel Simmons of American Fork (Utah) finished second in 14:51.7, followed by Gorze in 14:53.8.
Sahlman, whose older brother Colin was the top high school cross country runner in the nation for the dynamite Newbury Park squad last year, said he sensed he was starting to make up ground on Leo Young with 800 meters left in the race and he focused on working the final hills before passing his teammate and sprinting to the finish line.
“I thought I could actually win this because I was in the front,” Sahlman said. “I didn’t want to look back because it slows you down. And I started looking to the side to see if shadows were catching me and I didn’t see any.”
In an Instagram post, Sahlman later wrote: “A great way to end the season with the best team and teammates I could ever ask for ❤️”
Compare and contrast: Comparing times in cross country is not always fair and accurate due to a variety of factors, such as weather and course conditions. However, it is interesting to note the difference in the cumulative times of the top five runners for the Newbury Pak teams that won Nike Cross National titles in 2019 and on Saturday.
The 2019 Panther squad, which edged runner-up Great Oak High of Temecula, California, by a 128-132 score, had a team time of 78:48 while competing in cold and rainy conditions.
This year’s squad, considered by many to be the second-best high school cross country team in U.S. history behind last year’s edition, produced a team time of 76:47.
Leo Young is the one runner on this year’s team who also ran in the 2019 meet, when he finished 109th in 16:23.7 as a freshman.
The Nike Cross Nationals was not contested in 2020 or last year due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
Add Nike Cross Nationals: Great Oak and San Clemente finished sixth and seventh, respectively, in the boys’ team standings in the meet on Saturday with totals of 193 and 243 points, respectively.
Great Oak had defeated San Clemente, 67-80, for the Division I title in the CIF State Championships after San Clemente had defeated Great Oak, 73-95, for the Division I title in the Southern Section Championships the previous week.
Senior Mark Cortes paced Great Oak by finishing 55th in 15:51.3.
San Clemente was led by senior Rory Catsimane, who placed 50th in 15:49.4.
Onward to San Diego: Sadie Engelhardt of Ventura High School in California posted her third runaway victory in the last three weeks in the Champs Sports Cross Country West Regional at Mt. San Antonio College in Walnut on Saturday.
Running what she characterized as a solid qualifying effort, the sophomore clocked 17:43 over the 5,000-meter course to finish well clear of junior Gioana Lopizzo of La Costa Canyon High in Carlsbad, California, who finished second in 18:05.
The top 10 finishers in the girls’ and boys’ races advanced to the national championships at Morley Field in Balboa Park in San Diego on Saturday.
Englehardt, who set national freshman records in the girls’ 1,500 meters (4:11.79), mile (4:35.16), and 3,200 meters ( 9:50.69) during track season, had previously posted large margins of victory in the Division II races of the Southern Section and CIF State championships on Nov. 19 and 26, respectively.
She has been slowed by a sinus infection and congestion in her lungs at various points during the season but said during a videotaped interview after the West Regional that she likes where she’s at in her recovery process heading into the national meet in which the top 10 finishers from four regions across the country will run against one another.
“I just want to go in there with no fears and come out with something that I’m proud of,” she said.
Englehardt placed 15th in the national championships last year after finishing second in the West Regional.
Productive choice: Payton Godsey of Oaks Christian School in Westlake Village capped her fine junior season by winning the girls’ gold race in the Garmin RunningLane Cross Country Championships in Huntsville, Alabama on Saturday.
Godsey had qualified as an individual for the Nike Cross Nationals meet based on her performance in the CIF State championships in which she won the Division IV title with the second-fastest time among all five divisions. But she decided to run in the Garmin meet because her teammates were competing there.
She clocked 17:28.3 over the 5,000-meter course at John Hunt Running Park in Huntsville to finish nearly six seconds ahead of sophomore Zariel Macchia of Floyd High School in Mastic Beach, New York.
Macchia had finished third in the Champs Sports Northeast Regional meet on Nov. 26. She placed 12th in the national championships last year.
Kelvin Kiptum of Kenya and Amane Beriso of Ethiopia moved to third on the all-time world performer lists in winning the men’s and women’s divisions of the Valencia Marathon in Spain on Sunday. The following link will take you to a detailed story about their performances.
Time marches on: Haile Gebrselassie, one the greatest men’s distance runners in history, dropped off the list of the top 25 fastest marathon runners of all time on Sunday when the first three finishers in the Valencia Marathon in Spain recorded personal bests that surpassed his best of 2 hours 3 minutes 59 seconds that he ran in Berlin in 2008 while becoming the first man to run faster than 2:04:00 in the 26-mile, 385-yard (42.2-kilometer) event.
I could write numerous paragraphs highlighting all the accomplishments of Gebrselassie, but a few of his career stats will give you a good impression of his greatness:
He set a combined 10 world records in the men’s 5,000, 10,000, and marathon during his career;
He won two Olympic titles and four World championships in the 10,000;
Track & Field News ranked him as the No. 1 performer in the world in its annual rankings a combined 12 times in either the 5,000, 10,000, or marathon;
His personal bests of 12:39.36 in the 5,000, 26:22.75 in the 10,000, and 2:03:59 in the marathon currently rank third, third, and 26th on the all-time world performer lists.
Big day for the Land Down Under: Brett Robinson and Sinead Diver broke two longstanding Australian records in the marathon on Sunday while competing on different continents.
Robinson, 31, placed fourth in the men’s race of the Fukuoka Marathon in Japan with a time of 2:07:31 to break the previous national record of 2:07:51 that 1983 World champion Rob de Castella set in winning the Boston Marathon in 1986.
A little less than 4½ hours later, 45-year-old Diver finished 12th in the women’s division of the Valencia Marathon in Spain with a time of 2:21:34 to lower the national record of 2:22:36 that Benita Willis-Johnson set in placing third in the Chicago Marathon in 2006.
Robinson’s performance was particularly noteworthy as it came only nine weeks after he had run a then-personal best of 2:09:52 to place eighth in the London Marathon.
He was hampered by side cramps towards the end of that race, but he had fewer issues with them on Sunday when he broke the national record set by de Castella, one of the most revered distance runners in Australian history and a man who was the No. 1-ranked marathon runner in the world by Track & Field News in 1983, and the No. 2-ranked performer in 1981, ’82, and ’86.
End of an era: Sunday marked the 76th – and final edition – of the Fukuoka Marathon as race organizers announced in March of last year that the event was being discontinued due to a loss of sponsors and the high cost of producing the television broadcast of the race.
The Fukuoka Marathon began in 1947 as an elite-only men’s marathon for Japanese runners. But it eventually became one of the premier men’s marathons in the world as Derek Clayton of Australia set a world record of 2:09:36.4 over the Fukuoka course in 1967 and countryman Rob de Castella did likewise in 1981 when he ran 2:08:18.
The 1980 edition marked the first time in history that two men – Japan’s Toshihiko Seko (2:09:45) and Takeshi Sou (2:09:49) – ran under 2 hours and 10 minutes in the same race.
Seko and 1972 Olympic champion Frank Shorter of the U.S. are the only runners to have won Fukuoka four times.
Shorter, who also won a silver medal in the 1976 Olympic Games in Montreal, won four consecutive titles from 1971-74.
Seko won three consecutive championships from 1978-80. His fourth title came in 1983.
Boston here he comes: Eliud Kipchoge announced last week via social media that he plans to run in the Boston Marathon next year when the race is held on April 17.
It will be the first time that Kipchoge, the world-record-holder – at 2:01:09 – and two-time defending Olympic champion, will run in the Boston Marathon. It will also be the first time he will race in the U.S. since 2014 when he won the Chicago Marathon.
The 38-year-old Kenyan has posted at least one victory in the Berlin, Chicago, London, and Tokyo marathons, four of the six races that comprise what are called the Abbott World Marathon Majors. However, he has never run in the Boston or New York City marathons, the other two races that make up the World Marathon Majors.
He has said previously that he would like to win all six World Marathon Majors, as well as an unprecedented third consecutive Olympic title in Paris in 2024, before he retires.
The Boston Athletic Association (BAA) announced in a press release on Dec. 1 that Kenyans Evans Chebet and Benson Kipruto, winners of the Boston Marathon in 2022 and ’21, respectively, have also accepted invitations to run in next year’s race.
Chebet, who set his personal best of 2:03:00 in winning the Valencia Marathon in Spain in 2020, won the New York City Marathon in 2:08:11 last month.
Kipruto ran his personal best of 2:04:24 in winning the Chicago Marathon in October.
The BAA also announced that Ethiopian Gotytom Gebreslase, winner of the women’s marathon in the World Athletics Championships in Eugene, Oregon in July, has accepted an invitation to run in Boston in April.
Gebreslase ran a personal best of 2:18:11 in Eugene and also ran 2:18:18 to finish third in the Tokyo Marathon in March and 2:23:39 to place third in the New York City Marathon.
Off and running: An American record in the men’s 500 meters and a pair of depth-laden 5,000-meter races highlighted the start of the 2022-23 indoor track and field season last week.
Brian Herron, a University of Texas senior, clocked 59.87 seconds in the infrequently run 500 in the Commonwealth College Opener in Louisville, Kentucky on Saturday to best the previous U.S. record of 1:00.06 set by Brycen Spratling in 2015 and the former collegiate record of 1:00.63 that Spratling set in 2012 while running for the University of Pittsburgh.
Herron, who has a personal best of 45.25 in the 400, moved to second on the all-time world list in the 500 behind Qatari Abdalelah Haroun, who ran 59.83 in 2016.
Ky Robinson of Stanford won the men’s 5,000 in 13:11.53 in the Sharon Colyear Danville Season Opener at Boston University on Saturday.
The sophomore from Australia, who placed 10th in the NCAA Cross Country Championships on Nov. 19, moved to third on the all-time collegiate indoor performer list with his time.
Eduardo Herrera of the Under Armour/Dark Sky club placed second in 13:11.75. He was followed by Alex Maier of Oklahoma State (13:11.80) and the Northern Arizona duo of Drew Bosley (13:13.26) and Nico Young (13:15.25) in a race in which 13 runners broke 13:20.
Maier, Bosley, and Young moved to fourth, fifth, and ninth on the all-time collegiate performer list with their performances.
Brian Fay of Washington and Casey Clinger of BYU placed eighth in 13:16.77 and ninth in 13:17.36 to move to 10th and 12th on the all-time collegiate list.
Annie Rodenfels of the Boston Athletic Association won the women’s 5,000 in 15:08.22, followed by NCAA cross country champion Katelyn Tuohy of North Carolina State (15:15.92) and the Alabama duo of Hilda Olemomoi (15:17.97) and Mercy Chelangat (15:18.12).
Tuohy moved to ninth on the all-time indoor collegiate performer list with her time and Kenyans Olemomoi and Chelangat are now 14th and 15th, respectively.
Mark your calendar: USA Track & Field announced last week that next year’s outdoor championships at Hayward Field in Eugene, Oregon will be held from July 6-9.
Those dates are two weeks later than the June 23-26 dates for this year’s championships. However, that didn’t come as a surprise since the 2023 World Athletics Championships are scheduled to be held in Budapest, Hungary, from August 19-27.
The August 19 start date will be five weeks later than the July 15 start date for the World Championships in Eugene earlier this year.
More competition dates: The World Athletics council meeting in Rome last week led to dates being finalized for the 2024 World cross country championships (Feb. 10-11) in Medulin, Croatia; the 2024 World U-20 (under 20) track and field championships (Aug. 26-31) in Lima, Peru; and the 2025 World track and field championships (Sept. 13-21) in Tokyo.
It was also announced that Nassau in The Bahamas will host the 2024 World Relays meet, which will be the main qualifying competition for the men’s and women’s 400 and 1,600 relays, as well as the mixed-sex 1,600 relay, for the Olympic Games in Paris.
The dates for the 2024 World Relays are still to be determined, but the meet is expected to be held in April or May. The dates for the track and field competition of the Olympic Games will be from August 1-11.
Serious topic: The rising number of positive doping cases amongst Kenyan competitors, most of whom are distance runners, was discussed at length during the World Athletics council meeting.
Several stories previewing the meeting had stated that Kenyan athletes might be banned from competing internationally for two to three years due to the high number of its athletes testing positive for performance enhancing drugs, but that did not occur.
According to a report from World Athletics, “it was agreed that the Kenyan Government’s commitment to provide an additional $5 million a year for the next five years to strengthen Kenya’s anti-doping programmes was an appropriate response to the situation at this time.”
Kenya remains what is called a Category A federation under World Athletics anti-doping rules and the release from the governing body stated it is imperative that Kenyan authorities work closely with the Athletics Integrity Unit (AIU) to ensure that the additional funds are used effectively.
“I particularly welcome the additional resource made available by the Government of Kenya in this fight,” said World Athletics President Sebastian Coe. “The only way that we can reduce the scale of this problem is a joint commitment across all the sports stakeholders in Kenya and of course World Athletics and its Athletics Integrity Unit.”
Seventeen Kenyan athletes have been suspended this year for a range of violations by the AIU and another eight have been provisionally suspended, with the outcome of their cases pending.
In a Nov. 21 BBC Sport Africa story, 2015 World javelin champion Julius Yego said his country’s athletes were on a road to “nowhere” if the number of doping cases continues at its recent rate.
“Whoever is indulging in these drugs should be ashamed of himself or herself,” said Yego, who also won a silver medal in the 2016 Olympic Games. “We should raise our voices and create awareness. If we do not speak up, then we are going [down] a very dangerous path. Then Kenya will be nowhere in athletics.”
Broadcasting news: Warner Bros. Discovery has secured the rights to broadcast next year’s World Athletics Championships in Budapest, Hungary, in more than 45 countries across Europe, excluding the Nordic countries of Denmark, Finland, Norway, and Sweden.
The deal with World Athletics rights-holders Eurovision Sport and ESPN will enable the championships to be broadcast on channels Eurosport 1 and 2, as well as on the Eurosport app on a non-exclusive basis.
In memory: Murray Halberg, the 1960 Olympic champion in the men’s 5,000 meters for New Zealand, passed away on Nov. 30. He was 89.
Halberg was the No. 1-ranked 5,000-meter runner in the world by Track & Field News for the 1958 season, as well as for the years 1960-63.
He and Peter Snell, who passed away in 2019, were revered in New Zealand for winning Olympic titles in the men’s 800 and 5,000 within an hour of each other during the 1960 Games in Rome.
Known as the “Golden Hour” in New Zealand sporting lore, Snell outkicked world-record-holder Roger Moens of Belgium to win the 800 on the afternoon of Sept. 2 and roughly 30 minutes later, Halberg toed the starting line for the start of the 5,000, the race he would win after surging into the lead with three laps to go.
Halberg grew up playing rugby, but he suffered a dislocated left shoulder during a game when he was 17 that paralyzed the nerves in his left arm, ruptured arteries and caused blood clots to form around his heart. He could barely walk when he left the hospital two months later, but he eventually took up running as a competitive endeavor.
After finishing fifth in the mile in the 1954 British Empire and Commonwealth Games, Halberg placed 11th in the 1,500 meters in the 1956 Olympic Games in Melbourne, Australia, before winning the three mile in the Commonwealth Games in 1958 and ‘62.
He also became the first New Zealander to break four minutes in the mile in 1958 when he ran 3:57.5 to finish fourth in a race in Dublin in which Australian Herb Elliott ran 3:54.5 to crush the world record of 3:57.2 held by Derek Ibbotson of Great Britain.
Halberg was a three-time Olympian who also placed fifth in the 10,000 in the 1960 Games and seventh in that event in ‘64. He set world records in the two mile and three mile in 1961, and narrowly missed the world record in the 5,000 that year when his 13:35.2 clocking was two-tenths of a second off the mark held by Vladimir Kuts of the Soviet Union.
The injury he sustained playing rugby left him with a withered left arm and in 1963 he set up the Halberg Trust, whose mission was to support children with disabilities to be active in sport and recreation.
In memory II: Tony Waldrop, who set a world indoor record of 3:55.0 in the men’s mile in 1974, passed away on Saturday in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, after a long illness. He was 70.
Waldrop won the 1,000-yard run for the University of North Carolina in the 1973 NCAA indoor championships, but he took the track and field world by storm during the 1974 indoor season, during which he won the NCAA title and ran seven consecutive sub 4-minute miles, topped by his world record clocking in San Diego.
He then opened his outdoor season by winning the Penn Relays in a personal best of 3:53.2. That performance moved him to fifth on the all-time world performer list at a time when the world record of 3:51.1 was held by Jim Ryun of the U.S.
Waldrop won the 1,500 meters in the 1975 Pan American Games, but retired from competition after the 1976 indoor season because he had other interests he wanted to pursue. He was the No. 9-ranked miler in the U.S. by Track & Field News for 1973, and he was also ranked fourth for 1974 and seventh for ’75.
He spent most of his adult life working as a professor, researcher, and administrator in higher education, and was president of the University of South Alabama from 2014-21.
John your posts are terrific…keep up the great work