For a team not given much respect and barely advancing on a tie-breaker from prelims, Corona's boys ran a solid race to take 11th place at the 2007 CIF Finals. For the first time in school history, our team broke 80:00 on the Mt. SAC course! Any other year, this would have had the boys finishing between 6th and 10th place as a team, but here in 2007...my lord! This was the fastest Division I CIF Finals race contested in the history of the Southern Section. Five teams broke 78:00 minutes while the old record was tw0 squads. Whereas a 16:10 would normally have you finish around 55th, it was 83rd this season! An individual running 15:10 did not advance to the State Meet! Primarily due to the ideal weather conditions, we could go on and on about how competitive it was here in 2007. Meanwhile, this was the highest finish for a Corona High Boys' squad since the 1990's! Going in to CIF ranked #13, we are very proud that the boys stepped it up here considering that we had four of our seven athletes in their first seasons as varsity runners. In reviewing the stats, Corona was the 15th fastest team in the entire Southern Section and would have finished 5th in Div. II and 3rd in Div. III, while easily winning CIF Titles if in Div. IV and V. We have to find a way to reduce our enrollment....! On a more serious note, this experience will be crucial for these boys in their quest for the 2008 California State Meet!
Senior Raul Arcos closed out his Corona XC career with a stellar 15:31 effort. Passing a good number of athletes the last 300 meters, he propelled our squad ahead of Chino Hills into that 11th spot. No Corona athlete has broken 16:00 more times at Mt. SAC than Mr. Arcos has! But, that feat may be broken soon enough by "Boy Wonder" Michael Gauger. Michael motored to a 15:40 mark, which was the #2 mark in the Southern Section by all freshmen and #1 in Division I. He is the FIRST athlete in Corona High history to break 15:45 THREE times in the same season at Mt. SAC! As our #3 scorer and gutting it out with a sore knee that hampered his training the past two weeks, Alan Cuevas raced to a new pr with a 16:03! We knew he was in pain and we cannot express how much his team appreciated the heart that he displayed out there today. Closing out our scoring, our #4 and #5 almost came in together with Patrick Mynes (16:19) and Josh Verdone (16:23). Josh improved by 44 seconds since the invitational and was the crucial piece in our success these past two weeks. Patrick ran another solid race and of course, will be back for the 2008 campaign! Two more athletes returning next season are juniors Chase Williams and Franklin Sloat. Chase improved again as he progressed very nicely as the season moved along. Finally, Franklin experienced side cramps midway through the race but still came home with a solid 17:03. He did not break 18:20 at Mt. SAC in 2006 and broke 17:05 three times this season. These two know that they have the talent to run 16:00 next season and put us right there amongst the elite!
We cannot be more proud of these young men! This was the most determined and positive boys' squad Coach Gardner has ever coached and to know that we return 8 of our top 10 athletes next year is only more icing on a very nice cake! We cannot begin to express how we will miss Raul Arcos and Josh Verdone, but know that they will be along for the ride (from their college dorm rooms of course) next season!
We truly want to say thank you for all of the support we received. So many parents (of athletes not even racing) were there! Finally, we invite everybody to join us for our December 5th Banquet at Lake Norconian. All athletes will receive information next week.
