By Hayden Kulick
The Riverside City College track and field team is continuing their trend of consistency as they competed at the RCC Open on March 18.
Joshua Hornsby, RCC football wide receiver turned track athlete, had a dominant performance in the 110-meter hurdles. Hornsby had a firm lead throughout the entire race, crossing the finish line in 14.38 seconds and .5 of a second ahead of second place.
“We have a plan and we’re executing it, we told him to run under 14.5 and he ran 14.3,” hurdles coach Nanyo Segura said. “We are on schedule to peak at the right time and hopefully run sub-14 at the state meet.”
At first, Hornsby seemed to be vastly ahead of that schedule when the time clock showed a time of 13.33.
Hornsby, along with his competition, looked at the time clock and began to celebrate when the record breaking time popped up next to his name. However, the coaches and race officials rushed to point out the inaccuracy and worked to set the official time.
Mario Jacobo, (Middle distance runner for RCC) showcased improvement in the 1500-meter race. Jacobo finished in 3 minutes 59 seconds which was a 2 second personal record (PR) for him. Jacobo made his move with 250 meters to go. That ended up being a good decision as he passed multiple racers in the process while also avoiding dying out at the end.
“For the first two laps it felt comfortable, that’s the pace that we practiced,” Jacobo said. “The last two laps were just what we had inside and went out there and did our best.”
Distance runner Briana Rodriguez ran an unusual few races today as she primarily focuses on the longer distances. However, today she raced in the 1500 meter run and the 800 meter run.
“Actually it was a pretty good race because this is the fastest time I’ve run. It didn’t hurt as bad as I thought It was going to hurt,” Rodriguez said. “Last week I did Steeplechase so this week I kinda did one week shorter distance and I haven’t ran the 1500m this year yet, so I’ve just been trying to get my steeple to a standard in which I did last week.”
RCC’s next meet will be at the Concordia Invitational on March 26.
