OK, I got to witness the whole thing first hand. I'll try to do this from memory without looking anything up.
Frosh - No XC, Track came out after basketball, first race was a 1200 on a DMR. His team set the FS meet record which still stands today. That was, I believe, in his first week. 2 Weeks later is when he ran his 4:31 at the Stanislaus County Meet (mid march). I don't remember much of the rest of that season, but he did finish with a 4:22 for 4th place at the Sac Joaquin Section Meet.
Soph - Wasn't going to run XC, but the coach convinced him to come out just prior to the start of the season, so no base. He ran a number of solid races that fall, but finished with 15:14 at the D4 state meet. On the day, he was one second slower than AJ Acosta and faster than Michael Coe (Who went on to go 1-2 at FLN that year. Ran FLW but got dropped on poop out at Mt. SAC (we live in a very flat area). Joined JV basketball team at seasons end, tore meniscus. The tear went undiagnosed. Most of his season was a series of 3 weeks off, come back to running for a week or so, then 3 more weeks off. He still managed to win the 1600-800-3200 triple at our league meet. The next week, he had Arthroscopic surgery.
Jr. - Did not resume running again until late october, only about 2 weeks prior to our league finals race. Won league finals, went on to finish 2nd at state D4 with a 15:37. During the winter, he decided to train for running during the winter. Got a pretty good base built. On superbowl sunday, he decided to run the Davis Stampede 1/2 marathon with his girlfriend as a tempo run. Although his first mile was slower than 6 min, he decides to pick it up. At 10 miles, he caught the leader and went on to win in, I believe, 1:09. Soon thereafter, he developed some sort of lower leg ailment, maybe a stress reaction, maybe really bad shin splints, but it kept him on the bike for a good chunk of the season. Gets healthy enough for the end of the season where he ran 9:13 to win our section meet, then came back with I think a 9:08 at state (perhaps for 2nd). He then finished up with a 4:13 at Golden West.
Sr. - Since he had missed so much time during JR. year, he didn't take much time off after track and began the buildup for his final CC season. The stretch between the end of his Junior year and the end of his freshman year at OK state was probably the longest uninterrupted stretch of running he has ever had, and was when he did most of his best running. That fall, he opened up the season with a mid 14:40s effort on our league course and proceded to have one of the best cross country seasons in CA history. He finished off the fall with a course record at Woodward Park, crushing the meet record, held by Mark Davis (who competed in the finals of the 1996 Olympic Steeple). He also smashed the times of guys like Meb, and Hall. Easily won at FLW, but only finished 3rd at FLN (starting what would be a pretty typical cycle of fan adulation and then bashing on these and other message boards). During track, he had some very good results along the way to his 4:00/8:34 double at state. Probably the most impressive was a quadruple at a very low key meet in mid march (I'm going to pause to look up the times on athletic.net now) 4:21.18, 1:58.4, 8:53.6, then splitting 52.x on the relay less than 15 min later. At our league finals he put up a 4:14, 1:55, 9:09 triple on a hot day on a dirt track. He didn't get a lot of love nationwide for most of the season, because most of the meets he put up fast times in were pretty small time. For instance, he skipped Arcadia after coming back from World Cross with a slight tweak in his ankle or lower leg or something.
So, yeah....I've been an admirer for a while. The Riverbank coaches and I have always gotten along well. His coach at the time, Bruce Edwards, was always very forthcoming with anyone who was curious about German's training and racing plans.