William Hua (’16) leads the pack through the first mile of the varsity boys race. Photo by James CarrBy Heather Carr, Staff Writer
The Fountain Valley boys and girls cross-country teams tore through the Sunset League Preview at Huntington Beach Central Park last week by scoring first place for girls varsity and second place for the boys varsity team against five other schools from the district. The boys and girls frosh-soph and JV teams also ran competitively, with the boys scoring first place and the girls second place for their teams in both divisions.
The meet was scored dual meet-style, which, unlike invitational scoring for the sport, sets the scores (or place numbers) of the top seven runners on each team against those of every other participating school. A team’s objective is to score the lowest number of points against every other school to win the meet.
Although girls varsity finished fifth place last year for Preview and Finals as well as for the Finals of the 2013 season, they soared above expectations last week by crushing Edison with a score of 27-28, all while competing over a course that was newly-designed after the construction of a senior center interfered with the original race settings.
During the varsity race, however, all the runners–excluding Cassie Durgy (’16) of Huntington Beach, who finished first–had reportedly cut off a minimal section of the course, or an additional 15-20 seconds, according to hurdle coach Steve Knowles, who had guided a few of the races through it on a bike.
Though this slight incident may have contributed to a misreading in times for nearly all the individuals in the race, the results for the overall placings of both teams and individuals remained undisputed–Fountain Valley was first, followed by Edison and Los Alamitos–and the coaches from all the schools chose to record the times as official in spite of any reported inaccuracies.
The Fountain Valley varsity team was led by Isabella Guerra (’19), who placed second overall with a time of 18:19, Kristen Prado (’17) right behind her running an 18:33, and Ashley Faller (’19) finishing third on the squad with an 18:37. All three scoring in the top 10 for their race.
Head track and co-girls cross-country coach Brian Bivens reported on the girls’ races across all levels as a visible sign of the team’s talent and potential.
“I thought it [the varsity race] was fantastic…..and I believe we’re going to be going after our league championship by the end of the year,” said Bivens.
“I think probably Bella [ Isabella Guerra] was probably the newcomer that dropped the biggest time, she was outstanding,”said Bivens. “Anna Goeller (’19) [Who scored 4th on the team] was very, very good, Kristen Prado…there was just a lot of people across the board, and that’s the most of the Varsity team, but we’ll make announcements for the rest of the kids.”
Boys Varsity was led by William Hua (’16), who placed second overall in the race with a time of 15:38, followed by Marc Tadros (’18) and Jonathan Guevara (’17) running a 16:14 and 16:37.
According to Guevara, the team’s performance on all levels was a positive indication of their progression from the training they completed over the summer.
“The team overall did fantastic!” Guevara said.
“With frosh-soph and JV coming in first, it just shows how strong we’ve gotten over the summer. Though the Varsity team, me included, didn’t do as well as we hoped and had one of our runners suffer an injury, we were still able to pull through as a team and come in second. It might not have been our day, but, after some rest, we’ll be ready for [the] Dana Hills [Invitational].”
The Barons plan to carry the momentum throughout the rest of the season towards Finals in late October, where they expect to move on to CIF.
“The expectations for our team are very high,” Guevara said. “These past few races have proved that we are much stronger than ever and are ready to compete.”
