Bakersfield College competed in the fourth annual cross country Foothill Invitational at Prado Regional Park in Chino on Sept. 27.
In the men’s four-mile race, the BC men’s team finished in sixth place as a team with a score of 188, and in the women’s 5-kilometer race, the BC women’s team finished in fourth place with a score of 110.
San Bernardino Valley College won the men’s team score, with a score of 46, as sophomore Carlos Perez finished in second place, with a time of 20 minutes, 13 seconds. Teammate junior Jose Marquez was in fifth place, with a time of 20 minutes, 36 seconds.
Glendale College won the women’s team score with a score of 27, as sophomore Justina Sadauskaite finished in first place, with a time of 18 minutes, 24 seconds, and teammate freshman Angelina Gonzales finished in fifth place, with a time of 19 minutes, 18 seconds.
BC sophomore Cesar Mireles finished in 12th place in the men’s four-mile, with teammate sophomore Elliot Blakeslee in the top 60. BC freshman Emilley Leming finished in ninth place in the women’s 5K, with a time of 19 minutes, 22 seconds, and teammates sophomore Lorin Maki, sophomore Brenda Serrato, sophomore Samantha Pounds and sophomore Mariela Sanchez finished in the top 50.
Bakersfield College hosted the 2008 Bakersfield Invitational at Kern County Soccer Park on Oct. 4. This year’s invitational was the largest in BC history, with over 40 teams and 600 runners.
Coach Dave Frickel said, ” We had a lot of bodies,” and said about the conditions, “We dodged a bullet,” with the weather in the 90s the previous day. The weather was mostly overcast and cooler than usual the day of the invitational. The visiting teams expected worse.
The course at Kern Country Soccer Park was “laid out well.no one got lost,” said Frickel.
BC’s Mireles finished 12th individually in the men’s 4 mile, with a time of 20 minutes, 58 seconds and for the women’s 5k, BC’s Melinda Magee finished in the top 45.
The BC men’s team finished 14th overall (with San Bernardino and San Diego Mesa College missing), and the BC women finished 16th.
BC teammates Eayoall Atsbeha and Elliot Blakeslee finished in the top 100 for the men, and BC’s Emilley Lemming, Lorin Maki, Brenda Serrato and Samantha Pounds finished in the top 150 for the women.
The individual first-place winner of the men’s 4-mile was L.A. Valley’s Andrew Salg, with a time of 20 minutes, 21 seconds, and the women’s 5K first-place winner was Glendale’s Katie Dunn, with a time of 18 minutes, 9 seconds.
Orange Coast College won the men’s overall team score with a 92, and OCC also won the women’s overall team score with a 48.
Next for the men’s and women’s cross-country teams are two competitions Oct. 8 at the Western State Conference preview meet in Glendale and the Santa Barbara Invitational on Oct. 18.
The BC women’s cross-country team is ranked 13th in Southern California. BC men are ranked 14th.