Corona Crushes the Competition at the Mountain View League Finals |
Corona went into the 2007 Mountain View League Finals with the simple goal of sweeping all four races! In convincing fashion, all four squads ran away with huge victories in securing an undefeated 2007 season against league competition! As we predicted, no tricks but lots of treats for the Corona athletes! No one program has dominated a league finals like Corona did in recent memory....simply put, it was a VERY impressive and dominating performance on all levels! Coach Gardner knew that the Corona athletes would do well, but they definately outperformed his expectations!
Getting the ball rolling in the right direction, Corona's Junior Varsity Girls' squad dominated by putting nine girls amongst the top ten finishers! Sophomore Corinna Gutierrez and freshman Lauren Cochran battled back and forth with Corinna having a little more towards the end. Both girls would have finished in the top 14 in the Girls Varsity race and ahead of Santiago's #3 varsity scorer! Right behind them was freshman Alexxis Martin while fellow freshman Amanda Grooters ran, by far, her best race of the 2007 season! The girls scored an inspiring 17 points with a Santiago athlete providing the only blemish in a perfect team race! Katie Anderson and Tiffany Akaniro provided some serious punch for the girls' squad as well with their 6th and 7th place finishes!
After the girls' dominating performance, Coach Gardner told the JV Boys - "outdo it!" Well, they did! For the 2nd year in a row, the Junior Varsity Boys scored a perfect "15" in securing the top five spots and six of the top seven! Sophomore Fernando Cerda basically had to do most of the work up front with an impressive 42 second victory! He was followed by Freddy Palomares and Logan Shryock! As predicted, Robert Fitch and Lorenzo Marquez finished out the clean sweep! Ulisses Banos took 7th place as Corona finished with ten of the top thirteen athletes in this race! Freshman Antonio Garcia and Michael Sveinson along with sophomores Angel Pineda and Luis Santander all came in only 10 seconds apart to secure 10th through 13th places!
The Varsity Girls were next to take to the stage! Seeking their 7th straight undefeated league title, the pressure was on. But, like true champions, and with true poise, our girls simply dominated the entire race as soon as the gun went off! This was the first time this season we've assembled these same seven girls together and it showed as we had a 59 second gap between our top five and scored a very low 26 points. Juniors Malaysia Alexander and Ashley Evans earned their 3rd straight 1st Team All-League patch in taking 2nd and 3rd place to a very strong Caitlin Villareal of Norco. Alexander finished with a very strong kick while Evans continues to another step back to being her old self! Then, we saw the big red wave as we had five consecutive girls finish together! A nice surprise was seeing junior Reyna Gutierrez step it up to earn her first 1st Team All-League patch with her 7th place performance! Freshman Christina Ledesma and senior Jossie Munoz finished 8th and 9th respectively. Fighting injuries the past two weeks, junior Brieanna Pantele and senior Natalia Richeri fought hard to the finish, taking 10th and 11th. Seven of the top eleven girls in the entire league and when adding in the JV results, Corona had 10 of the top 16 girls!!! After beating Santiago 25-32 in the dual meet, Corona would have won 21-43 in dual meet scoring against the Sharks! Corona's #10 would have been in the top five on every other squad...nice going girls! With ML King entering the league in 2008, our girls will have to work much harder to hold on to earn a 8th straight league title!!!
The last race of the day belonged to the Varsity Boys! With last year's 2nd place finish to Santiago still in mind, our boys put on a true show. By the time the race had ended, the numbers were pretty staggering especially when you consider how much closer the dual meet scores were against Santiago and Roosevelt. Corona's boys only scored 24 points and would have beat the rest of the league combined. Corona's #7 beat Roosevelt's #2 while our #5 got in front of Santiago's #2. Want more numbers folks? Our boys beat Santiago 25-32 in the dual meet but would have won 20-39 while against Roosevelt, it would have been...16-47!!! With senior Raul Arcos nursing a sore upper knee, his devotion to team and unselfishness shined greater than ever as he finished #4 (6th overall) for the team on this day, but earned his 4th straight 1st Team All-League patch! No athlete since the 1990's has acheived this awesome feat! But, freshman Michael Gauger may be the next to do it as he finished 3rd place despite still getting over breathing complications caused from last week's smoke. Perhaps the surprise of the day belonged to sophomore Alan Cuevas. Cuevas took control much earlier than he usually does and never relinguised his determination in motoring in to a nice 2nd place finish! Last year, Alan finished a distant 15th place, so some NICE progression there! Junior Patrick Mynes earned his 2nd straight 1st Team All-League patch with a solid 5th place finish! Closing out our scoring was junior Chase Williams. Chase put together his best race yet in finishing 8th in the league and was only 26 seconds behind our #1. Meanwhile, junior Franklin Sloat and senior Josh Verdone earned 2nd Team All-League patches. ALL 14 VARSITY ATHLETES EARNED All-League patches here in 2007! For the boys, we will return five of the top eight athletes overall while four of the top seven freshman are at Corona.
Needless to say, this day definately belonged to the Red and Gold! Our varsity squads travel up to Mt. SAC next Saturday to take on some of the best in the state for the Division I CIF Prelims! The top four squads from the four heats (top 16 teams) move on to the CIF Finals. Our boys will go in seeded #12 or #13. Our girls will probably be seeded between #16 and #20 so they're slight underdogs here in 2007! The competition in Division I seems to be more fierce than ever as we'll need as much support as possible. We WANT everybody to be there to support the 14 athletes racing and representing Corona High!
This Sunday, we'll know when our races are and at what time.
See you all at the Car Wash this Saturday!!!!
