Dear Parents, 
 
     I have included the results of our WATEMELON RUN held at Lynbrook on Friday. 
I am going to try to 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 school 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 underclassman 
during this period of time were very weak.  Today it is just as clear that we have 
some excellent underclassman 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 years to come. 
 
     I had several freshman, sophomores and juniors who did not run in the Watermelon 
Run for one reason or the other.  Getting them in shape will 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 Rubenzer, 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 woud 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 Thornberg