The cross country team traveled to Lake Casitas in Ojai for the 24th annual Ojai Invitational. With a cool breeze and an early morning run the team traversed the hills and dells of the Lake for a tremendous performance. The event was split into a small school boys’ race and small school girls’ race and medaled the top 20 for each school class: freshman, sophomore, junior, and senior. For full results of all the Flashes go to the website: https://sites.google.com/site/fillmorecrosscountry/

For the girls, Kiana Hope once again led the charge with Laura Garnica, Jordyn Vassaur, Lucia Diaz and Alexis Tafoya all medaling in their respective grade levels. The five were also the top Lady Flashes finishers. Maria Villalobos and Amanda Vassaur displaced other teams’ scorers to round out the top seven. Sophomore Kiana finished 6th overall at 20:04 just behind two seniors, two juniors and another sophomore. Junior Laura completed the 3 mile course in 20:26 at 12th and had a course best of 1:25. Jordyn and Lucia finished together at 48th and 49th respectively. Sophomore Jordyn earned a 21:57 and Junior Lucia had a course accomplishment of 22:00. This was 1:03 better than last year. Freshman Alexis crossed the line in 22:11 for 53rd place. Maria ran for 22:48 and 72nd place. Amanda had a blazing improvement of exactly 4:00 from last year to finish at 23:27 and 93rd place. There were a total of 197 runners in the race.

The boys also had a standout day as Jose Almaguer blasted through the finish chute in 16:51 to earn 11th place. Anthony Rivas was 16th in 16:59 to have a 54 second PR versus last year. Adrian Mejia also had a course PR, his was 35 seconds and he ran 17:13 to finish 25th. Juan Mariscal was 31st in 17:23. Conquering the course at 39th overall was Isaac Gomez who garnered a time of 17:37. The top five flashes boys also earned class medals and the juniors took home 20% of the junior medals. This time was good enough for a 1:46 improvement over last year. Alex Gonzales was hot on the heels of Isaac with a finish of 17:38 in 41st place. Jordan Mendoza was 44th with a time of 17:42. This time also earned him a new personal record of 48 seconds. There were 293 runners in the race.

Also having great PR’s on the day were Justin Beach with a 2:54 improvement to finish in 18:10 and earned a medal. Sammy Martinez finished in 18:36 for a 34 second improvement. Vincent Chavez had a huge improvement of 1:40 as he strove for an 18:45 accomplishment. Frank Chavez took a stretch for 2 seconds better this year as he leaned for an 18:56 and snagged a medal. Ricardo Gutierrez completed the course in 19:19 which was 3:19 faster than his 2010 time. Nick Johnson also was more than 3 minutes faster than previous as he improved 3:28 to reach for a time of 19:50. Javier Rodriguez had a critical hit with a 37 second bettering of his previous time to burn through the chute at 19:52. Julian Garcia ran a 20:09 which is 2:25 faster than last year. Jaime Valdovinos had a slightly better increase with a 2:38 speed increase from last year as he crossed the line at 20:11. Robbie Munoz also burst the 2 minute mark as he sped for a 2:07 bettering to clock a 20:40.

The big improvement for the second week in a row, however, was Nico Frias with a phenomenal speed increase of 5:10 on the course versus last year. His virtually unheard of increase left him with a new best of 18:58 on the course and a finish in roughly the top third of the race. This improvement was more than enough to earn a medal as well.

Earning medals for the freshman were Jaime Vargas and Fransisco Erazo with respective times of 19:50 and 20:19.
The team next travels to Arroyo Verde Park in Ventura for the first tri-valley league meet of the season versus Saint Bonaventure, Nordhoff, Oaks Christian, La Reina and Oak Park. This will be worth one-fourth of the league title. Action begins at 3:00 pm on Tuesday, September 27th.

Alumni News If you, or anyone you know, is a former Fillmore cross country runner then we want to hear form you! Let us know how things are going and we will even post the news! Still running? Having a baby? Getting married? All this and more is fair game for the Alumni News. Email Coach Tafoya at ktafoya@fillmore.k12.ca.us or Mr. Mac Mahon at jmacmahon@fillmore.k12.ca.us to report the news.

WEBSITE
There is also a cross country website! Go to: https://sites.google.com/site/fillmorecrosscountry/ for all the latest and greatest in Flashes Cross Country.