San Bernardino Valley College's men's cross country team made the trip up the 215 Freeway to Cal State San Bernardino for the Coyote Challenge on Sept. 21 to test itself in its longest race of the season thus far, and the results were "exciting," according to coach Jim Ratigan.
"We have been doing our workouts based on running an 8K (4.98 miles) and today I was really surprised at the total team effort by our guys," said Jim Ratigan, head cross country coach. "We had a better 1-5 gap than we did last week over a shorter distance. We still have work to do, but to have the performance we did today we are heading in the right direction."
Claremont Mudd Scripps (Ranked 6th in the latest NCAA Division 3 poll) won the race with 16 points. SBVC finished 7th at 157.
For the third straight race freshman Elvis Rojas King (Beaumont) led the Wolverines with his 18th place finish at 25:03. Freshman Kevin Quinteros (Fontana AB Miller) took 29th at 25:32. Finishing third for Valley was sophomore Alvaro Heredia (Rialto) at 25:47 for 43rd place. Rounding out the scoring five for Valley were sophomores Jose Escalante (Jurupa Valley) at 61st (26:17) and Fernando "Frosty" Duenas (Canyon Springs) at 62nd (26:19).
Valley will spend the next few weeks training for the Brubaker Invitational on Friday, October 11 at Irvine Regional Park.