1994 Cross Country Highlights

    The last two weeks, Lynbrook has competed in the first of three Center Meets at Crystal Springs, site of the League Championships and CCS, where we've had complete teams in Men's and Women's Varsity and Men's Freshman (where we came away with a third place finish).
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    The following week we competed in the prestigious St Francis/Foothill College Cross Country Invitational, where the same Freshman team finished off with a superb fourth place finish behind powerhouses Bellermine and St Francis. The icing on the cake was a fifth place finish by the Senior Boys and a new course record by Jason Balkman. Note: Jason holds all four course records from his Freshman year through his Senior year, which no one else has ever accomplished.
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    We are now looking forward to the League Championships where our Varsity Boys and Girls both have a chance to finish in the Top Four and the Frosh/Soph Boys team has a chance for the League Championship title. Then comes CCS, where we will be competing in Division I, against the best teams in the Bay Area.
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    What a season! To wrap things up, Lynbrook finished 4th in both the Boys Varsity and Frosh/Soph divisions, 7th in Girls Varsity and 2nd in Boys JV. The highlight however, was qualifying BOTH a Boys and Girls Varsity team to the CCS championships, a first for Lynbrook Cross-Country. All League status was earned by Jason Balkman, Aaron Aslanian, Andy Tai, Paul Neves and Henry Shu. The girls were led by Joy Chang.
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    At the CCS meet, there were a combined total of 50 schools represented (out of 112 possible high schools in the CCS). The Varsity Boys ran first and came away with a 6th place finish in Division I (1550 or more students). The girls finished 9th in their Division I race. Once again, the boys were led by Jason Balkman and the girls saw Melissa Lo upsetting Joy Chang (our #1 finisher all year long). When we combined all the Divisions together, based on time, our Boys finished 24th out of 50 schools and our Girls were 38th, quite an accomplishment.
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    At our Cross-Country Awards banquet the following week; we all gathered at Jake's Pizza to tell stories of the past year and to hand out well deserved "cudos" all the way around. Our Scholar Athletes consisted of; Aaron Aslanian, Jason Balkman, Mike Lee, Tim Wang, Alvin Wu and Joy Chang. Our Most Valuables were; Jason Balkman (VB), Joy Chang (VG) and Paul Neves (F/S). Our Most Improved were; Alvin Wu (VB), Katharine Jen (VG) and Jeff Stokes (F/S). The Coaches Award went to Andy Tai and Priya Ramratam.
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    At the State meet, held on Nov 26th at Woodard Park in Fresno, Lynbrook once again took top honors with Jason Balkman not only winning the Division I race but have the fastest time of the day among all 4 divisions, quite an accomplishment. He, and the coach, both became very popular after that race was over.
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    We're looking forward to the 1995 Cross-Country season and hope to be able to further grow the team in terms of shear bodies and in achieving Personal Bests. But our number one goals are to make memories and have fun as a team - afterall, isn't that one thing we should also be learning in High School? Until next year, see you on the roads.