Not even the hot and arid temperatures could deter the Warriors’ quest to ingrain their storied success against the likes of universities at the Northridge Invitational Saturday.
With no meet this week, the team members can take a break as they’ll return this weekend to meet rival colleges such as Mt. SAC, Long Beach and Cerritos.
The squad stepped forward as a team at the Northridge Invite, setting a few personal bests while achieving respectable performances against open divisions and universities such as UCLA, CSU’s, Idaho State and Wisconsin.
The 80-degree dry weather during meet, however, was a factor that influenced the performance of the team.
“When you have three to four events throughout the day, the warm weather can negatively affect you through dehydration or fatigue,” Coach Dean Lofgren said. “We were pleased overall with the good performance of the team in the heat.”
The next meet for field events will be the CSLA Twilight Invitational Thursday. For the track events, it will be the Home Depot Invitational Saturday.
Assistant coach Kevin Hughley said that he is optimistic as far as competing against those from EC’s own conference at the next meet.
“I think taking this week off and getting a chance to rest a little bit will help because we have been working pretty hard for last six weeks,” Hughley said, “it is time to get the hunger for races back.”
Record holder Harold Young went against open division and university competitors and placed third in the discus with a throw of 174-10 and a throwing 55-7 3/4 in the shot put to place him fourth.
“The heat was bad and I felt so slow,” Young said. “I could have thrown farther if I was in better physical state.”
Other field event marks were Zhicheng Xu’s ninth place in the long jump at 18-11 1/4 and Thomas Norcio’s 14-1 1/4 pole vault, a personal best.
“Norcio keeps improving in the pole vault,” Hughley said.
In the running events, Kyle Montgomery placed fourth in the 800m with a personal best 1:59.51 and Emiliano Nash took fifth with also a personal best 2:00.16.
Montgomery ran in the 800m to strengthen his primary event,the 400m hurdles.
“I will probably knock off fifty-three seconds from my four hundred meter hurdles soon,” Montgomery said. “My goal is to be among the top three (runners) in Southern California.”
Justin Kalama ran a personal best 57.28 in the 400m hurdles, placing him seventh, and finished 10th in the 110m hurdles with 16.15. Despite the personal best, Kalama said that he wants to run faster.
“I have not accomplished what I want to do, but I’m getting closer to it,” Kalama said. “I definitely need to start running faster to help our team.”
Josh Ford ran 22.24 in the 200m, placing him ninth.
Corey Hirokawa ran the 1500m 4:26.4, finishing 11th, and David Olivares followed with 4:28.21. Emmit Karlay ran 22.89 in the 200m and ran 52.30 in the 400m.
“Although I could have done better, I feel all right,” Karlay said. “We could be a lot better for the next meet.”
