Paly Running History

1952 Coach Forrest Jamieson founds the first XC team at Paly. Paly's XC teams were consistent North Coast Section Champions in the 50s.

1956 Paly's Ron Larrieu, America's first teenage distance running prodigy races 2miles in 9:39 breaking the national high school mark of 9:44 set 31 years earlier. Larrieu will attend Cal Poly and go on to race the 10K in the 1964 Tokyo Olympic Games.

1956 Stanford's new head coach of track and field Payton Jordan reinstates XC as an intercollegiate sport.

1957 First CA State Meet unsanctioned - boys only

1965 First CCS XC Championships - boys only

1972 Title IX prohibits sex discrimination in any educational program receiving federal money. Only 7% of high school athletes are girls.

1977 CCS allows girls to compete for the first time

1980 Paly's Mike McCollum wins CCS, still holds the Paly 3200 record 8:59. McCollum goes on to run at Cal and co-found PowerBar

1985 Impostor James Hogue runs with Paly XC for 2 weeks before being exposed as a 26 yr old at the Stanford Invitational

1987 First CA CIF state meet - both boys and girls

1989 Paly boys win CCS and compete at States. The McFarland movie took place in the late 80s but no records can be found for Paly and McFarland competing against each other.

In the 90's and early 2000's, Paly girls were very successful winning CCS 3 times and qualifying for States 5 times.

1997-1998 were Paly Girls best team finishes at States led by Katie Brizgys who also wins CCS. Brizgys goes on to run at Stanford and still holds the 1600 and 3200 records at Paly

2007-9 were resurgence years for the boys ending an 18 yr dry spell led by Phil MacQuitty who goes on to run for UCLA. MacQuitty holds the 1600 and 800 records for Paly.

2014-2016 Paly boys qualify for States 3 years in a row led by Lucas Matison and Kent Slaney.

2019-???? Paly girls qualify for States.