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California
State Community College Saturday,
November 19, 2005 Giant Men 4th at State Meet After a season of outstanding races by individuals but frustrating team finishes, the College of Sequoias Men's Cross Country team finally put together a remarkable effort to place 4th as a team at the State Championships. This marks the 4th time in the last 8 years that C.O.S. has finished in the top 5 places in the State Meet. The Giants recorded their 8th win out of the last 9 Central Valley Conference Championships on October 28. That was followed, however, by a disappointing showing at the Northern California Championships 1 week later. Despite Rudy Cepeda, Isaias Escobedo, and Luis Marquez finishing 2nd, 3rd, and 5th respectively, the Giants placed only 4th as a team.
At the state meet, however, the very consistent top Rudy, Isaias, and Jose, the three sophomores on the team, showed amazing improvement over their previous state meet races. Rudy placed 94th in 2003, Isaias placed 59th in 2004, and Jose, returning to racing after a 2-1/2 year absence, finished 83 places higher than in 2002. How's that for improvement? A careful look at the results reveals how tight the competition and how close the team scoring was among the 184 racers and 38 teams represented; some interesting facts: (1) the Giants team placed higher than both the Northern and Southern California regional champions; (2) if the meet had been scored on the basis of combined times, the Giants would have placed third and only 1 second per man behind the 2nd place team; (3) a combined improvement of only 10 seconds among the 5 Giant scoring racers would have moved the team into 3rd place overall. In only her fourth race of the year, having joined the team part-way through the season, freshman Whitney Hubbard continued to improve and ran her fastest time of the year covering the 5K course in 21:27. According to Coach Bronzan, "I am very proud of the determination and hard work displayed by this team. This State Meet race was an outstanding effort on part of all our athletes and a great way to finish the season. Now let's get ready for the track season!" (Note: In the Fall of 2006 it was decided by the COA to disqualify the individual winner of the 2005 State Championship because of a number of eligibility violations; because of this the team he represented dropped from the top five places and COS' overall team finish was changed from 5th to 4th place team.) |
three again set the pace and this time were strongly supported by their
teammates. Rudy's (20:47) and Isaias' (20:54) performances rank them
as the 3rd and 4th fastest individuals for the Giants at the state meet on
this 10-year-old course. And by placing 4th and 8th respectively,
this marks the first time that the Giants have ever had 2 runners in the
top 10 places. Luis' (21:12)17th place finish makes him the
4th-fastest freshman in Giant history on this 4-mile course. Jose
Marino (22:15), coming back from an ankle injury suffered at the
conference meet, ran his best race of the year and was closely followed by
Brian Fussell (22:20) who closed fast and caught 9 runners in the final
300 yards. Juan Ramirez (22:53), also with an injury-plagued year,
finished with his fastest time of the season - a time that was over a
minute faster than he posted on the same Woodward Park course in
September.