CROSS COUNTRY | Junior Ryan Alvarado and sophomore Anabelle Chang were the first Brahmas to finish in the 18 school meet as both teams improved from last year’s event.
With only two seniors on the varsity team, the inexperienced Diamond Bar cross country team competed at the annual Bronco Invitational at Cal Poly Pomona. Both the boys and girls team showed significant improvement from last year’s event finishing 9th in the competition.
The 2013 Bronco Invitational had a total of 18 high schools and 215 boy and girl runners. The Cal Poly Pomona course was 3.1 miles long and consisted of grass and hard packed dirt trails.
Junior Ryan Alvarado, captain of the boys team, led the way for the team as he finished 23rd with an overall time of 16:02.9. Moments later, sophomore Walter Chang completed the course at 16:19.8. Next up for the Brahmas were juniors and twins Hamilton and Harrison Lin with times of 16:55.0 and 17:39.8 respectively. Closely behind the twins was sophomore Jason Cho who placed with a time of 17:54.1. Freshman Ronny Alemany had a time of exactly 18:00.0 and Austin Decambra finished for the Brahmas at his heels at 18:01.2.
“We did really well today. They were pretty close coming in. Our goal was to come under 18:30 and everyone did it,” coach Christine Cortez said.
For the girls team, the first Lady Brahma to finish was sophomore Anabelle Chang who finished 14th overall with a time of 18:47.8. Following Chang was junior Jeannie Huang, who finished 26th with a time of 19:17.3. Junior Ariana Infante and senior Annaliz Loera completed the race with times of 19:53.5 and 21:03.3, respectively. Following Loera’s footsteps, freshman Emily Slater placed 74th overall with a 21:06.7. Next for the Lady Brahmas were junior Jamie Ng and senior co-captain Landi Gonzalez who finished with times of 22:47.2 and 22:48.8, respectively.
“We are still working on tightening them as a group, but I think they did really good for their first race,” Cortez said.
Although the team lost five seniors last year, this year’s Brahmas are a completely different team. Even though DB is inexperienced, the team is starting to get together as a pack and working on improving their team chemistry.
“Last year, the team was a little more separate during practice. This team’s atmosphere is different,” Cortez said.
Working over their results in the first official meet, the players look to cut a few seconds off their time. “By midseason, we look to shave off at least ten seconds,” Cortez said.