NPHS XC sprints through national records
On Sept. 18, Newbury Park High School further established their name as a nationally-ranked team at the Woodbridge Cross Country Invitational. Woodbridge is the first official meet of the year and also the largest cross country High School meet in the country with just under 10,000 runners. Teams from all over the country come to this meet.
A few years ago Nicholas Young, a Newbury Park alumni and future Olympian, set the national record for the fastest highschooler to run three miles. Nicolas’s time of 13:39 was considered insane for a high school runner and he therefore set the national record. People believed that this record would stay for a while, considering how hard it was to beat. But, two years later Nicolas Young’s very own brother, Emilio Young, junior, has proved the nation wrong and beat his brother’s record with a time of 13:38 in the Woodbridge Cross Country Classic. “[The race] went very well, I enjoyed it a lot,” Emilio said.
Not only did Emilio excel in this race but the top four leaders of the race were all from NPHS. Emilio Young, Aaron Sahlman, junior, Alexio Young, junior, and Colin Sahlman, senior, all placed under 14 minutes merely seconds apart from each other, respectively. “The race went amazing,” Alexio said. “Team wise, we were able to control it from the start, which was the plan, we were able to work off each other and kind of divvy up the workload of pacing and leading, which I think is what in the end really allowed us to dominate so much in that race.” Overall the team averaged 13:54 beating the record of 14:14.
The teams’ training starts early in the summer where they travel up to Big Bear for four weeks. “We’ve been training all summer,” Emilio said. “We’ve accumulated a large base of fitness throughout training in altitude and we’ve run a lot of hard workouts up there.” Running in high altitudes helps the runners’ endurance and pushes them to work much harder than they would closer to sea level.
The team runs about 60-65 miles a week, whether it be in their early morning practice before school or after school. All practices are supervised by Coach Sean Brosnan, the head coach of Newbury Park’s Cross Country and Track teams. Brosnan believes it’s worth it to do less miles if the quality is better, “There are a lot of other programs out there that do 70-80 [miles]… We believe in more quality over quantity,” Brosnan said. “We do a lot of the little things. You know, we have morning practice where we do supplemental training, we work on hip strengthening, glute strengthening, ankle stuff.” The culture and the environment on the team largely contributes to their successes. “We just have a good culture right now where everybody kind of believes in everything and it’s been good,” Brosnan said.
After their victory at Woodbridge, the team headed to the Clovis Invitational confidently on Oct. 9. As expected, the team emerged very successful with setting a new national team record for the 5k with a time of 14:44. Yet, another national record this team has beat. Individually, Colin Sahlman got first place with a time of 14:29 and the following places were Emilio Young, Alexio Young, and Aaron Sahlman. This marks another time that these runners have placed in the top four. The environment of running in a pack greatly helps the runners in the real races, “If someone is having a bad day, the other people can pick it up,” Aaron said.
Overall, this team continues to make it clear that they are the best in the nation by continuing to work hard and push themselves more than they ever thought they could.
