NorCal League Race #5-NorCal Conference Championships-Race Recap

Club Sports May 12, 2016 SportStars 0

Once again, the Great Northern Weather Bias of 2016 was in play. While the South Conference racers toiled in Saturday’s biting, wet winds, the...

Once again, the Great Northern Weather Bias of 2016 was in play. While the South Conference racers toiled in Saturday’s biting, wet winds, the North Conference was blessed with warm air and crisp, blue skies. How the North Conference Illuminati geo-engineered that for every single weekend of the race year, we’ll never know.

Regardless of weather, it was another banner attendance day with over 900 racers competing for the final NorCal race of 2016. These young athletes pitted themselves again and again on the demoralizing slopes of Hurl Hill. The Varsity Boys in particular, heaving themselves up that thing five times over.

Matthew Tracey-Cook (Bishop O’Dowd) didn’t make sufficient burnt offerings to whatever deity handles mechanicals, as he was plagued yet again this week. Luckily, his plans to ride in UCI MTB World Cup with the USA Cycling junior team continues unabated, as does his season’s overall individual lead. Nicolas Theunissen (Berkeley High School) took the top step for Varsity Boys with some crushing lap times. Keegan Pfeiffer (Oakland Composite) scorched it for the Varsity Girls, coming across the line ahead of Emily Forsberg (Aptos High School) by less than a second, and taking the win for the first time this year. These two have been literally within spitting distance of each other for every League race this season and, on her last NorCal run of 2016, Keegan finally got the lead dog’s view.

Northside, Mackenzie Lewis (Woodcreek High School) continued to dominate the Varsity field from her season’s start as a JV Girl. Podium regular Lauren Desrosiers (Eagles High School) wasn’t far behind in second place. Nathan Barton (Placer Foothills Composite Racing) had another standout run in Varsity Boys, cementing his individual overall lead going into the State Championships. We also give a good slow clap to San Domenico School for making it onto the team podium with their bigger, co-ed squad for the first time.

Click away for this race’s individual results (North/South) and team standings (North/South), then check out the overall individual (North/South) and team (North/South) results. They all live, snuggled handily on the NorCal League’s race page.

And with that, the 2016 NorCal League Race Series has officially come to a close! We are pretty thrilled to have reached (and exceeded) our goal of having 1000 registered student-athletes participate in the 2016 season, and we are looking forward to helping existing and new teams develop over the summer and into the fall. The full extent of our riders’ ability and fitness was on display at the NorCal Conference Championships, and it was evident that all the kids’ hard work had definitely paid off.

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