Staff Writer
Preston Thue
With temperatures at the Ventura Seaside Invitational on Sept. 11 so hot that 40 Costa players dropped out of the race due to fainting, the Mira Costa girls cross country team powered through and earned second place in the tournament.
The boys cross country team, which competed on Sept. 12, placed first in a make-up meet against 64 other schools located around the South Bay.
The Ventura Seaside Invitational was cancelled midway through due to the heat. The varsity girls and the freshman boys had already completed their races beore it was canceled, but the varsity boys cross country team had not. To resolve this, boys cross country coach Roberto Calderon rescheduled the sophomore, junior and senior boys’ meet to take place at Laguna Hills High School on Sept. 12.
“Our girls and boys teams crushed our opponents,” junior Matthew Mullins said. “In the last 400 meters of the race, we had a lot of runners toward the front, which helped score a lot of points for our team.”
The freshman girls placed first, with Brooke Inouye coming in sixth place. The sophomores got third place overall, and Sofia Vialpando was the top Costa finisher in the sophomore heat. She came in 12th place with a time of 18:59. The junior girls got first place with Emily Jones finishing sixth. The senior girls got third place as a team, and the top finisher was Alexis Johnson in seventh place.
“It was a huge team effort,” junior Gabby Guerrero said. “When we found out how well we had placed, we were all beside ourselves with joy.”
In the make-up boys meet, the varsity boys won the entire invitational out of all 64 schools. In the sophmore boys heat, Cole Lewis placed third, and Caleb Llorin placed third in the junior heat. During the senior heat, Ty Garrett placed first in his division.
“In the first mile, we were near the front, but we weren’t going as hard as we could have because we were trying to save energy,” junior Austin Lamb said.
The boys are now 2-0 and the girls are 1-1. The next meet will be in Great Oak Park Irvine at the Woodbridge Invitational on Saturday. The top 16 runners from both the girls and boys teams will be going to Seattle on the same day for the Seattle Invitational.
“We’ve never done this meet in Seattle, so it will be an entirely new experience for the team,” Lamb said.
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