From left to right; Giselle Vargas, Marlene Romero, Jose Mora, and Julian Ramirez helped pace a depleted Owls squad at the San Bernardino Valley College Invite. Photos By: Alicia Longyear
From left to right; Giselle Vargas, Marlene Romero, Jose Mora, and Julian Ramirez helped pace a depleted Owls squad at the San Bernardino Valley College Invite. Photos By: Alicia Longyear

Strength in the Face of Adversity

 

San Bernardino, CA - With most of their teammates out due to injury or illness, the Citrus College Cross Country team headed out to the 2016 San Bernardino Valley College Invitational on Friday short-handed. The Owls didn't have enough runners to score for either the men or women, and were missing two of their top three runners on the men's side and their top three runners on the women's side at the event. Despite that, those that ran showed strength in adversity with all seven participating runners posting personal bests on the afternoon.

For the women, freshman Marlene Romero put together a solid race, finishing in 28th place with a time of 20:43.1. Fellow freshman Giselle Vargas was steps behind her in 38th place, with a time of 21:20.3. Rounding out the female Owl presence was freshman Chien-Ju "Alice" Lin who finished in 51st place with a time of 23:18.5.

On the men's side, top runner freshman Alberto Dolores continued his strong season with a 35th overall individual finish and time of 22:28.2. Freshman Eric Perez came through the finish line in 58th place (23:12.4), while sophomore Julian Ramirez (67th Place | 23:28.3) and freshman Jose Mora (91st Place | 24:53.1) rounded out the times for the Owls.

The Owls will have two weeks to heal up and get healthy before wrapping up the regular season portion of their 2016 schedule at the 2016 Western State Conference Finals. The final regular season race of 2016 is set for a 1:00 PM start on the campus of Oxnard College at 1:00 PM on Friday October 21st.