XC Mt. San Antonio College Invitational

By: Sean Chavez '24

Photo Credits: Steve Emery, www.lacxc.com

On Friday, October 20, the SOCES Knights cross-country team ran an invitational race at Mt. SAC (Mt. San Antonio College). The Mt. SAC is one of the biggest cross-country races in the country, with schools from all states coming to participate in the famous course. The boys varsity team consisted of Antonio Altamirano, Nathan Medina, David Boussi, Santiago Gomez, Dylan You, Hassan Mozannar, and Shumei Umemoto. The boys' junior varsity team consisted of Oscar Orellana and Carter Gendernalik. Last but not least, the girls' varsity team consisted of Elizabeth Castillo, Mai Sakamoto, Jasmyn Talactac, and Destiny Lee. The Knights boys JV team ran at 10:00 AM, followed by the girls' Varsity team at 11:13 AM, and the event finished off with the boys Varsity team at 11:26 AM. All of the SOCES Knights teams did great that day and since boys' Varsity had a full team they were able to be placed as a team, finishing in 15th place at the meet.

Nathan Medina explained the course and the conditions at Mt.SAC saying, “At first the course is pretty easy, it’s pretty flat for the most part and then there’s hills. It starts off with the switchbacks, so that kind of gets you a little bit, so you have to regain your breath. Then you have ‘Poop-Out Hill’, which is the second hill that really gets you and it takes longer to recover from that. After that is ‘Reservoir Hill’ which really wipes you because you’re already tired from the first two hills. It was also super hot that day, I think it was about 90 or high 80’s.”

Another runner, David Boussi said “It was really warm that day but I think I did really well compared to my last year's time which was 20:25.” David’s time on Mt.SAC was 19:24 which showed a lot of improvement on his part which was also the case for most of the runners from SOCES. Overall, the 3 teams did great and came in extremely strong, proving that the SOCES Knights cross-country team is a major force to be reckoned with as they go into the final weeks of the season. This was proven this Thursday as both Girls and Boys varsity teams came in second in League Finals and will continue on to City Prelims next weekend.