Varsity Boys Set New School Records - Girls Race to an Impressive 2nd!!!
Under cloudy skies and some of the best temperatures that we've run in all season long, Corona's athletes were primed to run well at the 31st Annual Kenny Staub / John Barnes Invitational. By the time the sun broke through, a number of our athletes had rewritten the team record books for this invite and took another step closer to being more competitive for November.
Starting off with our boys, we easily set a new team time record for the course by over two minutes (2003 CIF Finalist squad went 84:20)! With Loyola (#1 in California for Div. II), Barstow (#1 in Caifornia for Div. III) along with Crescenta Valley (ranked top ten in the state for Div. I), our boys finished a very respectable 4th place. Loyola won with the FASTEST team time in the history of this invitational. But, our team time (82:18) would have won this same race in 2006 and converts to breaking 81:00 minutes on the Mt. SAC course! Our boys have now faced four of the top ten teams in California and will face two more great squads next weekend. By the way, this tougher course is a much better indicator of our talent than the Woodbridge course. Way to keep stepping it up boys...next up? Achieve our first goal and win the 2007 league title - it will be our 6th in seven seasons!
Senior Raul Arcos put together his best race of the season staying with the front pack the entire race and racing to a 15:38. Running a more aggressive race, he outkicked two very good athletes in the end for a 6th place finish. (The course runs 18-20 seconds slower than Mt. SAC, so Raul was on track to run around a 15:20). The previous school course record was 16:07 by our own Daniel Wilcox (2004) while Raul only raced to a 16:38 last year. Meanwhile, Michael Gauger broke another freshman invitational record and AGAIN, it was bettered by another freshman in the same race, well actually, two other freshman! His 16:20 on this course definately validates him as one of the best 9th graders in the state. Moving on, sophomore Alan Cuevas improved by 95 seconds from 2006, racing to a 16:28. He was the fastest sophomore of the entire invitational! Meanwhile Patrick Mynes was a solid 4th in 16:43, which also ranks as his best race in a Corona uniform! Those four are now in the Top 10 list for Corona High XC on this course. Finally, Chase Williams is back and put together his best race yet as a prep. His 17:08 was a tremendous improvement while Franklin Sloat continues to improve with a solid 17:19. In the Sophomore Race, Fernando Cerda was in our top seven for the 3rd invitational in a row with a strong 3rd place finish and 17:22 mark! Also earning a individual trophy was Joey Casim as he was able to outlean teammate Freddy Palomares while both ran a 17:45. We had nine boys run a 17:45 or below (seven in 2002 was a previous best for this invite). Six of top seven today are underclassmen as we sat out Josh Verdone (#5 at Woodbridge) and Logan Shryock fell ill on this day. We have built ourselves into a strong eleven men while we have a huge week ahead of us!
Our varsity girls finished 2nd in their race to a very strong Crescenta Valley girls' squad! CV ran one of the best team times in the 31 years of this invitational, while our girls raced to a new school record for this course. We ran over 90 seconds faster as a team than we did here in 2006 and almost a minute faster than the previous school record set in 2003 (when Alma Escobar motored to an 18:12)! So, our girls proved that they can be a CIF Finalist squad again and now with patience, we can get everybody healthy by November and qualify for a 6th straight CIF Finals!
Continuing to run smoother and smarter than ever before - junior Malaysia Alexander has emerged in huge ways. Malaysia raced to the 2nd fastest time in school history (19:05) for this course and an impressive 4th place finish. Considering the difficulty of the course - this was her best race in her three years with Corona as she improved by 50 seconds from last year! Senior Natalia Richeri also ran very well, improving by 17 seconds from last year and a strong 9th place finish! It was good to see her being more aggressive throuhgout the race and with that same confidence she displayed as a junior. Junior Brieanna Pantele, fighting a slight cold, faded slightly throughout the race, but did improve by 66 seconds from 2006! She is the 7th fastest girl we've had on this course - not too bad for being sick while she knows that under healthy circumstances, she would be right there with Natalia, some 30 seconds faster! Christina Ledesma got her first real race in three weeks and showed some slight effects of losing two weeks of training. But, we're very confident that she'll only improve from here as only two other freshmen from Corona have run faster on this course. The reality is, we would have had four girls break 20:00 here with everything clicking the right way. In describing that she felt tired the whole race, senior Jossie Munoz ran a solid race in 20:51. Finally, senior Tiffany Akaniro and junior Katie Anderson both improved by one minute from 2006 while freshman Lauren Cochran ran our 7th fastest time of the day in 21:22. Lauren earned an individual trophy for her strong 7th place finish.
The past five seasons, our girls have qualified for the CIF Finals and we're faster at this point in the season than we have been in those five seasons. Very nice showing girls...and yes, we have to mention - the girls did this without three of our top five returners from the 2006 CIF Finalist squad!
We're hoping to find time to include more soon enough...
