By Heather Carr, staff writer
The Fountain Valley girls cross-country competed at the Laguna Hills Invitational at Laguna Hills High School, where they faced teams from across southern California as well as the sweltering conditions over the rolling 3-mile course, last Saturday.
Although temperatures rose to the high 80’s as the meet progressed into the day, the Barons were satisfied with their results and what they had gained from the experience.
“As a team, I think we did pretty well despite the heat,” Yen hi Mai (’15) said. “We were no more than a minute apart, which is pretty great. The course had a lot of downhills which was a great advantage to us. Overall, the only problem with the race was the 90-degree weather.”
The Barons were forced to power through the difficult course, which included a long downhill and several major inclines in the middle of the race.
However, according to Kristen Prado (’15), who blazed a 22:13—the second-fastest time on the frosh-soph squad—running the hilly terrain at the Fastback Shootout at Mt. SAC (San Antonio College) the previous week helped prepare the team for the varied landscape in Laguna Hills.
“The course had a lot of downhill slopes and one major hill, but after running those two hills at Mt. SAC, hills don’t really scare me anymore,” Prado said. “I think it was a pretty fair course but it was tougher for me at the 3 mile marker because it was just really long, but I had to push through. The weather was hot, or like medium hot, but it felt just like an afternoon practice at school, so it wasn’t terribly awful. ”
Top individual performances came largely from the freshman team, which included Savannah Bushman, who finished 15th with a time of 21:39, and Avani Salcedo right behind her, fighting out her way on top in a three-man battle to the finish line in 22:21, finishing 28th overall in a race of 176 other runners.
Though the upperclassmen did not achieve any PRs on the course, the team was primarily focused on learning to be competitive and to gain racing experience to benefit them later during the more significant meets of the season.
“From this race I learned that I need to get outside of my comfort zone just a little bit more, because looking back I think I could have pushed my pace a little faster,” Prado said. “I can see that I slowed down during half of the second mile and third, but I intend on learning from this and getting better altogether as a team.”
Next week, the top eleven girls on the team will travel to San Diego to compete at the Mt. Carmel Invitational on Friday, and the boys team will race at the Woodbridge Invitational in Great Park, Irvine.
