STATISTICS

From the gun, we had four closely together with Kirsten Adams taking the lead chores over teammates Gabi Rubi. Megan Adams, and Yuriko Miyata.  We could immediately tell that something was not right with Maria Colin who got out slowly and didn’t look like she was “racing” (we were unaware her groin muscle had strained earlier).  A slowly-getting-back-into-shape-after-a-year-off Amalia Dominguez (who we had instructed to gradually build into it) now became our 5th way back in the pack.  Up front, Kirsten continued to chase after the leaders separating herself from her teammates as Gabi and Megan worked together and Yuriko coming back after a slow mile to catch them near the finish.  With four runners in front of any other teams 4th (except OCC) – and in front of all but 3 other teams 3rd!! we were right in the hunt.  The gap between our 5th was way too great though as we hung-on for a still-solid 6th just behind conference rivals Mt. SAC (7 ahead) and Cerritos (12 ahead).  We would expect as the season progresses, fitness levels improve, and aches slowly subside – we will have a very competitive group.

Daniel Belay ran a solid race up front taking charge at about 800m and taking along some good company in Cerritos’ Daniel Clifford, Riverside’s Mike Munoz, and East LA’s Oscar Ogwaro.  The near 1 ½ minute gap between Belay and the next ECC athlete killed our team score although we did have some solid individual runs buried in there. Bryan Swartz was solid but we thought his 30th place would be our 5th man’s spot. At 800m, Dan Villanueva was having trouble breathing and was never really effective in the race with the same for Francisco whose calf cramped somewhere in the middle. Louis Castro, Javier Figueroa, Bryan Camarillo, and Paul Brazeal looked good in moving-up the entire race passing many in the last mile moving into our 4th, 5th, 7th, and 8th spots.  With every team no more than 64 points ahead of us (to make things simple- assume we had Villanueva 25 places up and Fran 40 – that wins it!), obviously we can be right in the mix this season.  The only notable team absent appeared to be defending State Champion Trade Tech who would have likely been right about 100-130 points also.