The cross country teams put in quality performances in the Triton Classic on Saturday, grabbing two top four performances in their annual home meet.
The Triton men finished second out of five teams competing, falling five points behind conference rival Cal Poly Pomona. The Broncos scored 36 points with all of their five scoring runners in the top 11 overall.
“In this race, we really wanted to get a measure of where we stood in the conference,” head coach Nate Garcia said. “Pomona is the defending runner-up from last year, so we knew they were going to be a test for us. We ran well, we were closing on them, so we’re really curious to see how it plays when we race them next week.”
On the men’s side, redshirt senior Jesse Morrill had a career-best race on the Tritons’ 10k home course, clocking 32:10 to finish third overall. Morrill’s time was nearly 30 seconds faster than his previous best for the course.
“It was a great bounce-back from his last time out,” Garcia said. “He wasn’t very happy with his performance in Minnesota, so he was really focused on doing well here on the home course.”
Running close behind Morrill was a trio of Triton runners, comprised of sophomore Matt Lenehan, freshman Kellen Levy and freshman Mario Flores. They clocked 33:27, 33:36 and 33:40 to finish eighth, ninth and 10th, respectively.
Lenehan credited his teammates with his good result, but said that the team result takes precedence over individual achievement.
“I think I did pretty well,” Lenehan said. “It’s all about getting help from the teammates… Ideally, we would have beat Pomona and [gotten] the team win. That’s the most important thing, but I’m pretty pleased.”
Aaryn Kobayashi led the way on the women’s side, coming in at 23:37 over the 6k course to take 12th place. Jackie Sikkema followed closely at 23:42, who finished 14th overall.
“Aaryn had a real nice race today,” Garcia said. “It was a good bounce-back for her as well, after a couple of races she wasn’t happy with.”
The Triton women finished in fourth place out of the 11 teams in the event, scoring 111 points. Cal Poly Pomona swept the meet by taking the women’s title as well, tallying 54 points.
Violah Lagat — the younger sister of U.S. Olympian Bernard Lagat — of Central Arizona won the individual title with a time of 22:08. Henry Lelei of Central Arizona was the top individual men’s finisher, coming in with a time of 30:22.
The Tritons now have two weeks to prepare for the California Collegiate Athletic Association’s preview meet on Saturday, Oct. 23. The race will take place on Cal Poly Pomona’s home course in South El Monte, Calif.
