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By Celeste Walter
By Celeste Walter
Riverside City College women’s cross country team seized positions 3 and 4. The course followed alongside a dry riverbed beneath an oak canopy that draped over half the course, leading to a steep hill.
A mixture of grass, dirt and asphalt lined the course at the Howard Brubaker Invitational course at Irvine Regional Park on Oct. 11. The RCC women’s A team took third, with the women’s B team taking fourth place behind Orange Coast as No.1 and Mt. San Antonio as No. 2. Thirteen junior colleges competed in this event.
Freshman Natalia Richeri finished sixth, leading the RCC team with a time of 19:02, followed by sophomore Arianna Celis who finished 12th with a time of 19:32, freshman Elvira (Gabby) Del Toro placed 14th with 19:39 followed by freshman Katherine Gomez placing 17th with a time of 19:51.
Sophomore Casey Glassey finished 21st with a time of 20:00. Glassey said she feels team support is an important factor and vows to be more supportive. Other areas she identified as important performance factors were diet and rest, allowing for the intense training needed to succeed on this course.
“The coach definitely knows what he’s doing with our training,” she said.
Glassey said she is looking forward to the challenge of the Santa Barbara Invitational.
“I did really good on that course last year,” she she continued, “it is fun because it is so different, it has grass and sand and everything.”
Larissa Davis of RCC B team placed 27th with a time of 20:00.
Davis said she did ok, “I ran for the B team, I just got back so this is my first race, I did alright, I got fifth on the team, one of our girls is out so it would probably have been sixth.”
She is looking forward to the workouts and said she feels “strong and definitely confident.”
Freshman Elizabeth Sanchez of the B team placed 51st with a time of 21:42. Sanchez said she felt comfortable with the results noting that the “course was good, besides that one hill over there,” she said smiling.
“I’m really excited about Santa Barbara, I’ve never ran that course before.” She added that she “hopes we get number one at state.”
Coach Barbee said he felt individually “Katherine Gomez and Gabby Del Toro had really good solid races and then the other three ladies in the top five didn’t run terrible but they can improve.”
“We are really satisfied because the B team’s goal was to be in the top six today and they finished fourth.”
Barbee said, “Mt Sac was ranked fourth in the state and Orange Coast was ranked first in the state beat us. We’re currently ranked sixth in the state so the No. 4 team was only six points ahead of us, that’s positive.”
“I’m really happy about Bekah Fairley, a B team runner. She really stepped up.” Barbee said, “Though she beat someone from the A team, another runner from the B team beat her so she didn’t get a varsity spot, but she beat two girls she hadn’t beat this year. ”
There will be one more chance to run as an A and B team , Barbee said, “at conference championships you have to run everybody and at the region and state championships you can only run 7 girls so some girls are making their bid to be in that top 7.”