With its top five runners finishing in the top 100, the men’s cross country team placed eighth at the state championship meet at Fresno on Nov. 17.
EC went into the race ranked 11th but managed to move into the eighth slot ahead of Orange Coast and Antelope Valley.
“We are not satisfied but we are pleased,” coach Dean Lofgren said. “Our expectations are higher than that; we establish high goals for ourselves.”
The Warriors had freshman Steven Calise finish 15th, 21:04; freshman Alex Gorney, 47th, 21:32; sophomore Louis Castro, 56th, 21:46; sophomore Ramon Hernandez, 84th, 22:05 and sophomore Bryan Camarillo, 97th, 22:21.
Despite finishing in the top 10 in the state, with a time differential of 1:17 and with the group finishing in the top five, the team isn’t completely satisfied with the way they performed.
“It is good to finish eighth in the state although the standard at EC is higher,” Lofgren said. “There are teams in the state that have never finished in the top ten.”
Some of the runners believe they could have individually performed better.
“I feel I had a terrible performance individually,” Gorney said. “I’ve been a top runner all year, but I feel I might have peaked too early or maybe I wasn’t used to such a long season and it took a toll on my body.”
Despite the feeling of not performing to the best of his ability, Gorney believes there is a lot from this season and the state meet that will benefit the team.
“We improved a little toward the end and managed to be consistent all year,” Gorney said. “The team should be great next year since two of our top guys are returning and the rest of the team is now very experienced.”
The coaching staff doesn’t believe that the way the team approached the race was bad and is convinced that if the team had changed the strategy it has used all season, things would have been worse.
“We went with our philosophy of not to gamble,” Lofgren said. “From experience, if you gamble in the last race of the year, you walk away way behind in the race.”
Telling the team to go out any faster in the beginning of a race, in hopes of doing better, is not something either coach will tell the runners.
“The only time that works is when a student takes it upon themselves,” assistant coach Sean Sheil said. “I have never told a team to do that.”
Still, both coaches believe the team had a great year and there was a big improvement from last year’s team.
“Our sophomores improved a lot from last season,” Lofgren said. “We also had some good experience for the new guys that will be returning next year.”
