By Long Beach State’s cross country teams raced through the finish line Saturday, with new individual running times to show in the record.
Senior George Martinez and junior Mikayla Florez achieved their personal best this past weekend, as they surpassed their previous times in the 6K and 5K races. The LBSU men’s and women’s meet was held at the Highlander Invitational at UC Riverside’s Agricultural Operations Course.
The men ran the 6K, coming in eighth out of 13 teams with a total of 163 points, while the women took home fifth out of 16 teams in the 5K race with an overall score of 142 points.
Martinez surpassed his personal best at 18:0.0 in fourth place, a mere two seconds behind the third place winner. Other notable runners for LBSU include freshmen runners Ezra Sotelo (34th, 18:38.1) and Joey Del Valle Rutherford (36th, 18:40.3) who finished 34th and 36th, respectively. For the junior runners, Faustino Diaz took home 42nd place at 18:46.5, while Patrick Burciago came in 56th place with a time of 19:02.5. Not far behind was Trevor Stangle running a 19:26.8 for 77th place.
Florez placed 11th overall for the women, beating her old time of 17:48.0 earning a new record time of 17:47.8. Following behind her was freshman runner Taylor Owen (22nd, 18:09.8) and sophomore Julie Vargas (28th, 18:17.7) taking home 22nd and 28th place. To finish off LBSU’s top five was junior Alexis Ceballos crossed the finish line at 18:30.2 for 40th place, followed by freshman Mauren Fitzsimmons (49th, 18:36.7) to round out LBSU’s notable performance.
In the men’s race, Pepperdine’s junior Nick Heath was the individual winner of the 6K, course with a time of 17:49.7. Cal State Fullerton took home the overall win with a score of 58 points, followed by UC Irvine (72 points) and UC Santa Barbara in third (78 points).
The women’s 5K individual winner was UC Santa Barbara’s senior Jenna Hinkle with a time of 16:48.0. UC Santa Barbara also took home first place overall for the women’s race with 50 points, followed by Cal State Fullerton (67 points) and finishing the top three was UC Riverside (71 points).
The next cross country meet for LBSU will take place on Friday at the Titan’s Track Complex in Fullerton. The women will start the 5K course at 5 p.m. and the men’s 8K race will begin at 5:30 p.m.
