Marcos Campos won the collegiate portion of the men's race and Maria Blazquez
ran a strong eighth for the women as Cal State Fullerton grabbed a pair
of third-place finishes Saturday at the VS Athletics/Cal Poly Invitational
Cross Country meet at San Luis Obispo.
Campos ran the 8K course in 26:23.6 with teammates Nick Arciniaga (4th
in 26:32.6) and Jordan Horn (5th in 26:41.5) close behind. Damien Nieves
(23rd in 27:31.8) and Dan Miller (24h in 27:32.4) completed the Fullerton
scoring. Host Cal Poly won the men's race with 51 points, just ahead of
runnerup UC Irvine at 53 and the Titans at 57. Back at 104 points for
fourth was UC Santa Barbara.
Horn was moving up on the leaders in the middle of the race when he took
a rough spill on a slippery patch on the course.
“Jordan showed a lot of guts getting up after he fell," said
Coach John Elders. "He went down hard and it knocked the wind out
of him. It banged him up pretty good, too.” For the senior Campos
it was the first time in his career that he has run No. 1for the Titans
Blazquez returned to the No. 1 spot for the Fullerton women as she ran
the 5K course in 18:41.3. The Titans finished third behind UC Irvine (50
points) and See Jane Run (58 points) with 75 points. Other Titan scorers
were Juliane Masciana (1th in 18:44.6), Christine Ruby (16th in 18:56.8),
Luz Valdez (19th in 18:59.3) and Dahamar Perez (21st in 19:00.8).
“I was really impressed with our pack running (19 seconds) today,"
said Elders. "And by Christine’s individual effort. She has
been sick and looked horrible before our warm-up. I was ready to pull
her, but she wanted to run. Not only did she run, but she had a breakthrough
performance."
This meet also marked the return of senior Danielle Hernandez. Her comeback
from an injury got off to a good start running No. 7 on the team with
a time of 19:39.
Coach Elders said he is very optimistic as his teams prepare for the Big
West Championships in two weeks.
“This was a really positive weekend for both squads. We’re
getting better every meet, and I feel like we’ve built a lot of
momentum going into the conference championships."
