By LEYLAND YANG
Staff Writer
Girls Varsity Cross Country placed third at the PCL League Finals on Tuesday October 31, at Mason Park. They met the requirement to make CIF, placing in the top three teams. Last year, they had barely missed the cutoff, placing fourth in league finals.
“My hopes for CIF are to maybe make CIF finals since I didn’t do that last year,” sophomore Collette Lowengrub said.
Lowengrub, varsity’s top runner, placed first in her individual race, with a personal record time of 17:35. Varsity’s next runner junior Avery Klauke came in 26 seconds later at third place, having been in second for the most part of the race but was passed in the last 800 meters. Securing the first and third spots along with the other runners allowed Girls Varsity to end up placing third overall.
“We had to beat northwood in order to qualify for CIF, so everyone was really determined to pass as many runners as possible,” sophomore Amberley Martinez said. “We were so excited and proud that we qualified for the first time in 18 years, and I am excited to race in CIF.”
Boys Varsity came in at 4th place and narrowly missed CIF, as they missed the requirement to qualify by one place.
“We missed it by 10 points,” junior Raja Batra said. “So if a [University runner] had placed five places higher we would have gone.”
Many of the Boys Varsity runners were unhappy with the results of the race, look forward to the next year.
“I hope we will go to CIF next year; we have only one senior varsity runner leaving, so we just have to keep training hard to prepare,” sophomore Michael Blinstrub said.