Wednesday, October 15, 2008

Runners 13th at Oñate

El Defensor Chieftain Reports

The Socorro High School cross country team showed continued improvement at the Oñate Invitational in Las Cruces on Saturday, Oct. 11.

The boys varsity team placed 13th out of 19 teams, which included all three Las Cruces schools, Alamogordo, and El Paso, Texas.

All runners on the team once again improved on their personal best times — some by a few seconds and others by several minutes.

Socorro only had two runners break 20 minutes the week before in Santa Fe, and had five under that time this week. Two more, Jaron Martinez and Ellen Aster, are very close and should run under 20 minutes by the district meet on Nov. 1.

Aster ran a 20:18, which placed her 14th out of 80 varsity girl runners. Aster ran faster than any other Class 3A girl and a full two minutes faster than the closest District 3-3A competitor. Freshman Nikki Mortensen ran a 22:55, improving her personal best by exactly three minutes.

Leading the way for the boys was eighth grader Sierra Cahall, who ran an 18:01 on the 5K (3.1-mile) course, a full 3:05 improvement from his previous best. Cahall finished 37th out of approximately 100 varsity runners.

"I am really happy for Sierra because I know he is a good runner and he is finally pushing himself like he should be," coach Steven Montoya said in an e-mail to the Chieftain. "I hope that his time will give him confidence in his abilities and his training and push the other runners on our team to follow his lead."

Dylan Gallegos, another eighth-grader, finished with a time of 19:46, decreasing his previous best by 2:46.

Also, for the first time all season Socorro had a JV team for the boys, and Montoya congratulated Ignacio Chavez, Jose Arevalo, Chuck Findlay, Brandon Romero and Michael Cory for finishing their first race.

Even more impressive, according to Montoya, is the fact that the team put in its highest practice mileage to date the week before. The day before the meet, seven members of the team ran New Mexico Tech's Owl Bar run, a 13-mile run that starts at the Tech campus, runs along the bosque and finishes at the Owl Bar and Cafe in San Antonio, N.M.

As the runners finished, many parents were on hand to support them for the accomplishment.

"I was hesitant to allow them to run this at first because of the distance, their young age and the fact that we had a meet the following day," Montoya said. "But as I ran with them I realized that each of them wanted to accomplish something previously thought impossible."

Montoya thanked Socorro Striders and Riders for donating running shoes for runners that were previously out running in basketball high tops, and SpokeWord bicycle shop for donating energy gel packets for the team.

Socorro travels to the Rio Rancho Jamboree this Saturday, Oct. 18; where 67 other teams are expected to compete in the preview of the state championship course.

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