By Heather Carr
With a field of over 22,000 runners from teams across the country and one of the most famous courses in the world, the cross-country team competed at the 66th annual Mt. Sac Invitational near Mount San Antonio College last Saturday.
The highly-acclaimed course is a challenging one, featuring a fast start with three large hills known as Switchbacks, Poop-out, and Reservoir. The Barons ran in the footsteps of some of the greatest high school runners in history, as they battled it out against a highly competitive field.
The girls’ performance proved slightly disappointing, with varsity scoring seventh place with a team time of 1:38:35. “We ran the first half of the race really good, we just need to work on the second half a little bit more, but we packed together really good,” Natalie Grohman (’15) said.
However, the sophomore team won third in their race, with Heather Carr running a time of 20:43 and Laura Resendiz running 21:05. “We did good,” Coach Brian Bivens reported after the race. “We were led by our sophomores.”
The boys team, on the other hand, were not as satisfied with their results, after finishing last place in the Varsity Sweepstakes race with a team time of 1:22:41.
In spite their tough performance, the boys are looking forward to sweeping at all levels next week at the Sunset League Finals. Diego Riveria said (’15), “We’re all really looking forward to working hard this next week and going out and trying to take the league championship and do our part to help sweep Sunset League again.”
At the Sunset League Finals, the Barons will face rival teams from Edison, Marina, Huntington Beach, Los Alamitos, and Newport. There, they will battle it out to score a place among the top three in order to move on to CIF Finals.
