It’s called “one of the largest and most prestigious high school meets in the country.”
It’s the Woodbridge Classic cross country meet, and it will be held Friday and Saturday at Great Park in Irvine.
This is the 42nd edition of the meet. After a few years at Silver Lakes Sports Complex in Norco, the event found a new home at Great Park.
Meet director George Varvas said the Woodbridge Classic will have more than 450 runners from 16 states.
Among the top entries are Ventura junior Sadie Engelhardt. She set the Woodbridge Classic record last year when she covered the 3-mile course in 15 minutes, 42.6 seconds to set the national record in that distance.
Engelhardt was last season’s CIF Southern Section Division 2 cross country champion and was a CIF State champion. She also was a CIF-SS champion in the 800 meters and 1,600 meters in track and field.
Among her competition in Saturday night’s sweepstakes race will be Trabuco Hills junior Holly Barker, last year’s Orange County girls cross country athlete of the year when she was at Laguna Hills, and Oaks Christian senior Payton Godsey, last year’s CIF-SS Division 4 champion.
On the boys side, Orange County 2022 cross country athlete of the year Evan Noonan, a junior at Dana Hills, is scheduled to make his 2023 cross country debut Saturday in the Woodbridge meet.
JSerra’s deep and talented girls cross country team also is set to compete in the Woodbridge Classic. Dana Hills is in the meet, too, with its boys and girls teams that both are ranked No. 1 in CIF-SS Division 3. San Clemente’s boys team, No. 1 in CIF-SS Division 1, also is scheduled to compete.
Racing at various levels begins Friday at 5 p.m. and Saturday at 3:50 p.m.
Go to gvarvas.com for the complete schedule and more.
Varvas said that once spectators enter Great Park they should orient themselves to the location of the park’s famous large orange balloon.
“The first half of the course is on the northeast side of the…
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