Watermelon Run Letter - 09/19/77

Dear Parents,

I have included the results of our WATERMELON RUN held at Lynbrook on Friday.
I am going to try and send as many results home each week as I can this year.  Our
squad is very small this year when compared to several years ago, so it will be easy
to get them to you.

We have two meets in September.  Next Saturday morning at 10:00 am is the
annual SUNNYVALE INVITATIONAL at Sunnyvale High School.  On thursday, September 29th
at 3:00 pm is the annual Stanford Meet on the Stanford campus.  This year the
course has been moved to the football stadium area.  More information about this later.

Just what does the information about the Watermelon Run mean?  It is always
difficult to judge how the team will be in November based upon the first run of the
year; however, I believe that a few generalizations can be made.  First and most
important is the fact that we had some very fine juniors and seniors in 1974 when we
placed 6th in the USA National Postal meet.  This meet pits all the high schools cross
country teams in the nation.  Each school has to have five runners run two miles and
the times are added up for the team total.  Finishing 6th in the nation was a great
honor; however, it was clear that we were in deep trouble because our underclassmen
during this period of time were very weak.  Today it is just as clear that we have
some excellent underslassmen and do not have an experienced junior or senior varsity
runner.  In fact we do not have any seniors on the team with running experience.  This
is the first year in MANY years that I have not had at least two or three experienced
seniors around.  Consequently, we enter the Sunnyvale meet with as little experience
as any school around the Bay Area.  It would seem that the major problem for us is to
get everyone healthy and running together before the big meets in November.  The
second problem would seem to be keeping them together, for if we can, we should be in 
excellent position for several years to come.

I had several freshman, sophomores and juniors who did not run in the Watermelon
Run for reason or the other.  Getting them in shape wil really help all our teams.
I believe that the results showed clearly that running during the summer gets one off
to a good start in the Fall.  Jesse, John, and the two Daves ran very very well.  They
had excellent times for any sophomore and freshman anywhere.  Kalon Holdbrook, Joe
Martin, and Peter Rubenser, three sophomores from last year's frosh championship
team, are greatly improved.

We will probably run a different varsity team each week, giving everyone a chance
to run.  John Deagen and Dave Johnson will run every once in awhile on the sophomore
team.  Lewis Krumm, a junior, ran well since this was his first cross country race ever.
We are still working to improve our frosh team.  I hope that we can improve this year
as we did last year.

If you would like any information or have any questions, please feel free to
call me at my home telephone number 379-0474.  Hope to see some of you at Sunnyvale.

Verne Thornburg