By Heather Carr, Staff Writer
The Fountain Valley Cross-Country team competed at the world-famous Mt. SAC (San Antonio College) Invitational this weekend, where they went neck-and-neck against teams from across the state as well as the nation over the rolling 2.93-mile course.
On the girls team, Varsity delivered a satisfactory performance, according to Coach Crystal Reed.
“[The Varsity girls] raced solid, packed up well,” Reed reported. “Julie [Ransom] (’15) also looked the best all year today, confident, focused, and strong. I look forward to how she races at League.”
Other top performances came from the sophomore squad, where Lynn Vo ran a blazing time of 21:07 and scored 4th place, with Kristen Prado right behind her, placing seventh overall in a race of over 100 other runners.
The boys team expressed mixed reactions concerning the Varsity team’s race, where although a few runners had shown dissatisfaction, others had surpassed expectations, one of them being Galyn Nash (’15), who in spite of recovering from a recent toe injury, scored fifth overall with a time of 15:48.
“I did really good,” Nash said. “Everyone else about pretty good, but … slow.”
According to Coach J.D. Krawczyk, this failed to come off as a surprise, due to a lack of competence from a large number of lowerclassmen in the squad.
“It’s tough to put them in a position and ask them to perform,” Krawczyk said. “This is their first year, and the main thing is getting in the experience . At one point we were running four sophomores in the top seven and then two juniors, so I guess that makes that it all said that everyone’s still coming back around”
However, next Saturday during the Sunset League Finals-one of the most highly-anticipated races of the season-the Barons would be required to exceed expectations in order to keep up their streak of winning the event for the fourth time in a row.
“We have a very, very slight chance of winning Varsity boys. Very slim outside shot. But I think I’d be pretty happy with 2nd place on Varsity, hope we get three in the top 10 and five in the top 15, maybe five in the top 14,” He continued.”We would definitely want to beat Edison, and we want to make it tough for Huntington too. We have a lot more depth than Huntington does, and if they have one guy that’s off, it works in our advantage.”
The girls team are also eager to make an impression at Finals next week as well, and plan to score first on both the frosh-soph and JV levels, and hopefully place top three amongst a highly competitive Varsity field at Central Park, against the other schools in the Sunset League.
“We are going to rest next week and chase after a top spot at league,” Reed said.
