CROSS COUNTRY — The Tritons took full advantage of their final home meet of the regular season with a strong showing at the annual Triton Classic.
The UCSD cross country team turned in a top performance on its home course on Saturday, with both the men’s and women’s team finishing in the top four.
The men placed second overall with five runners in the top 20, while junior Bre Schofield led the women to a fourth-place finish. The meet was the Tritons’ last of the regular season as they prepare for conference championships, set to begin Oct. 24.
“I was pleased,” head coach Nate Garcia said. “On our course, it’s important to be patient early on and really attack the second half, and both of our squads did a very good job of that.”
Sophomore Jeremy Riley led the men’s team, finishing the 10K course in 33:37 to place 10th overall. He was followed closely by senior Mike Wright in 11th place. Sophomores John Svet, Alex Corliss and Andre LaMothe were the remainder of the Tritons’ scoring runners, finishing 14th, 17th and 20th, respectively.
Many of the Tritons ran in packs together, pacing each other and contributing to the team’s strong final score.
“We saw some real important team grouping,” Garcia said. “Pairs of people were running together throughout the race, and there’s no way to overstate how important that is in cross country.”
Riley also noted the benefit of running with teammates.
“We started well as a solid group of five guys,” Riley said. “We moved up in the pack that way, and it really helped us out.”
Cal Poly Pomona had four runners in the top 10 for a score of 29 points to win the meet. UCSD tallied 88 points to finish second out of the eight teams competing.
On the women’s side, one individual performance stood out to boost the Tritons’ final score. The All-American Schofield ran the women’s 6K course in a time of 22:20 to finish fourth overall as UCSD’s top individual finisher. Sophomore Elena Inouye was the next Triton finisher in 13th place, clocking a time of 22:58.
Junior Brianna Alban, sophomore Aaryn Kobayashi and senior Marie Schaper ran together to round out the Tritons’ scoring — finishing 22nd, 23rd and 24th, respectively.
Central Arizona College won the meet on the women’s side with a score of 59 points. UCSD’s score of 80 points was only two short of University of Victoria’s total of 78 and put the Tritons in fourth place out of the 13 squads that participated.
Garcia emphasized the importance of being able to run at home before going into the season’s final stages.
“I think any time we can get on a familiar course, its good for us,” Garcia said. “I think where the big advantage came is with the great support we had out there. We had a lot of student athletes out there and a lot of other students, and getting that kind of support is really important to our team.”
The Tritons next race will be at the California Collegiate Athletic Association Conference Championships on Oct. 24. The race will be hosted by Humboldt State University in Arcata, Calif.
Readers can contact Liam Rose at [email protected].
