On September 23, 2023, the Marauders traveled to Rocklin for the Jessup Invitational held on the University campus. The action opened up with the Freshman Boys Race. With the top 3 Freshman running up in the Frosh/Soph Race and number 4 sitting out this meet, the shorthanded Marauders still managed to finish 4th out of 12 teams with 121 points, behind Davis-42 pts, Granite Bay-59 pts, and Folsom-86 points. The top 7 Marauders were Griffin Smith, Max Hernandez, Nick Ramos, Gianni Allen, Jadon Fuentes, Drew Eandi, and Micah Olmstead (14-15-25-29-38-43-53) with a 1-5 man time spread of 43 seconds. Next up was the Frosh/Soph race. With the top 3 Freshman complementing an already strong sophomore team, Jesuit took the lead early on and never looked back finishing 1-2-3 and taking 8 of the top 10 places to win with a near perfect score of 17 points over Whitney-87 pts, Davis-93 pts, Granite Bay-112 pts, and Folsom-140 pts. For the second consecutive week, Freshman Rafael Jopson took individual honors, narrowly edging out teammate and fellow freshman Lucas Alberts 10:12 to 10:13. Sophomores Kyle Jakary-3rd, George Vlahos-5th, John Barreiro-6th, Nick Ryan-7th, Aaron Beasley-8th, and Jackson Johns-10th led the charge all along with Noah Nast running under 11 minutes. In the featured Varsity Race, the Marauders looked to bounce back from a 43 point defeat to rival Davis at last week's meet in Concord. This time the race was much closer as the two teams battled back and forth throughout the race with Davis coming away with a 1 point victory over Jesuit 31 to 32. Comparing team times, Jesuit was 1:12 slower (79:28 to 80:40) than Davis last week but narrowed that margin to 6 seconds this week (79:23 to 79:29). Sophomore Isaac Abbott lead the Marauders for the second straight week, this time finishing 3rd overall in 15:34 followed by Senior Declan Higgins 4th in 15:50, and Sophomore Drake Hoferer 5th in 15:50. Juniors Chase Cressman 10th in 16:00 and Navin Kadel 15th in 16:14 rounded out the scoring 5 for Jesuit with Junior Trevor Felix 16:27 and Senior Jonah Reynolds 16:31 serving as sixth and seventh men. The final race of the day was the JV boys race run over the same course as the Varsity. In this race, Jesuit was lead by Juniors Tyler Thies 13th, Eric Ross 34th, Kai Switlick 44th, Brayden O'Brien 49th, Senior Giovanni Bagatelos 62nd, Junior Justin Pareded 72nd, and Senior Alex Brown 80 making up the top 7 as Jesuit finished in 5th place as a team. This coming week, the Marauders have 2 meets with the team competing in the Delta League Meet on Wednesday morning held at Cherry Island Soccer Complex in Rio Linda followed up on Saturday when Jesuit returns to Willow Hill in Folsom to compete in the Tom Laythe (Bronco) Invitational. Photo Credit: David Zielke