RIVERSIDE, Calif. — The University of La Verne men's and women's cross country teams ran their second race of the season on Saturday at the UC Riverside Invitational. This race was the first big race of the season—several local teams were present, as well as a couple of out-of-state Division I teams.
The Leopards were led once again by freshmen Christopher Arcos on the men's side and Rachael Dela Cruz on the women's. Arcos finished the 8-kilometer course at 110th place with a season best time of 26 minutes, 47.8 seconds. Del Cruz crossed the finish line at 44th place with a season best at 19:29.8 seconds.
The Leopards had a total of six runners in the women's race. Melissa Cerrillos finished second on the team and 84th in the race at 21:26.6. Following Cerrillos was Andrea Valdez (21:53.8), Emily Nguyen (23:36.6), Daisy Perez (24:09.6) and Mikayla Thornly (28:34.5).
"The women's squad got their first taste of a big collegiate race today," La Verne head coach Bryan George said. "There were some good individual efforts, but we still need to work on our pacing. It's easy to get caught up in big races like this and run too fast in the early going, which is what happened to a lot of us."
On the men's side, Marcelo Arcos crossed the finish line second on the team and 123rd place overall with a time of 27 minutes, 12.3 seconds. Following Arcos was David Sincock crossing the finish line at 131st place (27:32.2), Mario Martinez (28:36.3), Samuel Johnny (28:49.2), Antonio Rivera (29:37.0) and Damon Gomez finishing in 30 minutes, 47.6 seconds.
"We dealt with some illness and injuries on the men's side this week which affected us today," George said. "But I did see some nice improvements with our pack running and how they executed the race plan."
Overall, the women's team finished 15th while the men's team finished 22nd.
The Leopards' next race will be on Saturday, Sept. 26 at the Stanford Invitational.
"We're all looking forward to the Stanford meet in a couple of weeks," George said of the upcoming meet. "It's a prestigious meet and we'll get to run with teams we don't normally compete against."
