The San Bernardino Valley College track team had a strong showing Saturday at the Southern California Regional preliminaries at Saddleback College, with two athletes having already punched their tickets to the State Championships May 16-17, and a handful of others set to return for the regional championships this weekend.
Already packing their bags for the State Championships at the College of San Mateo are distance runners Kevin Nava and Zach Calderon. The pair qualified for state in the 10,000 meters, each lopping significant time off of their personal bests in the process. Nava finished third in the race, posting a time of 31 minutes, 53.91 seconds, taking 27 seconds off his his PR. Calderon took 20 seconds off his PR with an eighth-place finish at 32:21.90. Nava is also entered in the finals of the men's 5,000 meters this weekend.
Jacob Mendiola will be heading back to Saddleback this weekend for the regional finals in the 3,000-meter steeplechase. Mendiola, who has the top time in the event in the state this season, cruised to the top spot in qualifying with a time of 9:31.23. Just missing out in the finals, however, is teammate Noah Townsend. He took 12 seconds off his personal best in the event, finishing 11th overall with a time of 10:08.48, just 1.3 seconds from the final qualifying spot.
The men's relay team of Elijah Koskey, Semaj Johnson, Keshion Mackel, and Solomon German will be running at the regional finals in both the 4x100 and 4x400 relays. The 4x100 team qualified ninth with a time of 42.62 seconds, while they qualified fifth in the 4x400 with a time of 3:19.16. Although they qualified with the group, both Johnson and German just missed qualifying in their individual events. Johnson finished 10th overall in the 400 meters, missing the final spot by .02 seconds. German was even closer in the 100 meters, finishing in a tie for ninth at 10.8 seconds, but his time was 4-thousandth of a second (.004) behind Ventura's Caleb Marzette for ninth.
On the women's side, Sara Jaquez won her heat in the 800 meters, posting a personal best time of 2:20.33 to qualify in the third spot for Saturday's regional final.