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Nico Young and Jace Aschbrenner Establish Themselves Among Most Talented Tandems in Nike Cross Nationals History

Published by
DyeStat.com   Dec 9th 2019, 12:46pm
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Young’s victory supported by All-America honors from senior teammate Aschbrenner, helping Newbury Park win anticipated showdown with California rival Great Oak to capture first national championship

By Landon Negri for DyeStat

PORTLAND – He dazzled and left people in awe for this entire 2019 cross country season, but the athlete that was usually just behind Nico Young was just as important in Newbury Park winning its first national championship.

Young and fellow senior Jace Aschbrenner formed the best 1-2 combination in the country and that was a huge factor in Newbury Park’s success.

The Panthers capped what coach Sean Brosnan termed a “perfect season” by winning the Nike Cross Nationals title Saturday at Glendoveer Golf Course in a 128-132 victory over Great Oak, competing as Temecula XC, for their first national crown.

BOYS RACE REPLAY | RESULTS

It came on a stereotypical Portland day, in which it rained, got muddy, and then rained some more.
Young won the 5-kilometer race in a course-record 14 minutes, 52.3 seconds. Just 15 spots back in 18th place was Aschbrenner in 15:29.1.

His scoring position was third, and when you give a team like Newbury Park a four-point start from the first two positions, it makes it hard to beat, especially when Great Oak’s spread among its five scoring runners was only 10 seconds.

It was, Aschbrenner said, the culmination of a four-year journey.

“My freshman year, we had a dream to go to the state meet,” he said. “Sophomore year, we said, ‘Hey, why don’t we try to win state,’ and that didn’t happen until my junior year. Then we said, ‘We can win at NXN this year.’

“We’ve had a vision. We’ve had a dream since my freshman year. And I said, ‘I believe it could happen. The question is, do you guys believe?’ They believed, we knew what it took and we went out there and we did it.”

Consider on Saturday, Aschbrenner would’ve been the ace for any other lineup in the 22-team field except for seventh-place finisher Dakota Ridge from Colorado – competing as Littleton XC – which got a fifth-place finish from Connor Ohlson.

This is nothing new, as many have referred to Aschbrenner as the top No. 2 runner in the nation. And yes, the two do work together during the majority of their races, although Young was focused on running away from the entire field Saturday to become the second consecutive California male athlete to capture the title, following Liam Anderson of Redwood Larkspur last season.

“I know how Nico races,” Aschbrenner said, “and I kind of key off of like, where he is in the race and where I should be.”

Young and Aschbrenner were 1-2 at the Woodbridge Invitational in September, where Young ran an all-time best for 3 miles at 13 minutes, 39.7 seconds. Aschbrenner was second in 14:04.8.

At the ASICS Clovis Invitational, Young encountered his closest race of the season, running 14:28.9 for a two-second victory over Leo Daschbach of Highland High in Arizona. Aschbrenner was fourth in 15:03.5.

The duo easily went 1-2 at the Marmonte League Finals, then again at the CIF Southern Section Division 2 finals. Then, last week at California’s state championship meet, they led Newbury Park to a 73-point victory in Division 2 by again going 1-2 in 13:54.1 and 14:23.2.

With such a deep field at the NXN meet, the advantage was huge, knowing the showdown with Great Oak that loomed. The teams were ranked Nos. 1 and 2 in the nation entering the meet, and had been most of the season.

“I said every guy counts,” Brosnan said. “You’ve got to lean and get across the line and do big things.”

The final margin was equal to the second-closest finish in meet history. So nervous was Aschbrenner afterward, waiting for final team results, that he couldn’t talk.

“I was just in kind of a daze on how the entire race went,” he said. “I was just coming up that last hill and I’m like, ‘I’m going to leave it all out there.’ I got a couple of guys at the end, and I don’t know if they were individuals or team runners, but I was just like, ‘This could be the difference.’

“It was just every last drop of everything I had. I’m like, ‘This could be the championship; this could be All-Amercian, whatever it takes.’”

“I saw Jace in that top 20, and I said, ‘That’s where he needs to be,’” Brosnan said. “My other guys were right around where we’d thought they’d been. A couple of them were falling back, but they rallied at the end, passed some guys and got the win. It was pretty awesome.”

It’s a feeling – Young described it as “super amazing” – the Panthers will never forget.

And with their performances, Young and Aschbrenner again solidified themselves among the most formidable frontrunners in the meet’s 16-year history.

Sean McNamara and Matthew Dettman finished first and fourth in 2004 to lead York High from Illinois to the inaugural Nike Team Nationals title. Chris Derrick won and teammate James Riddle placed sixth in 2007 to help another Illinois program, Neuqua Valley, also capture a national championship.

But in the NXN era since 2008, when several of the top individuals in the country were added to the race, even some of the most productive pairs like Taylor Wilmot and Tanner Anderson finishing first and third for Washington power North Central in 2013, or Casey Clinger and McKay Johns placing first and ninth in 2016 for Utah dynasty American Fork in 2016 weren’t enough to achieve a team championship.

Considering there were only four athletes competing for teams Saturday that earned All-America honors by placing in the top 21, and two of them represented Newbury Park, the Panthers had the right recipe to secure a national title, thanks in large part to their two senior leaders.

“Just to hear our name come up as the national champion, all four years kind of flashed before my eyes,” Aschbrenner said. “It’s been crazy.”



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