With its only home meet of the year, the Bakersfield College women’s cross-country team showed dominance by placing first in a six school meet in the Bakersfield invitational on Sept 6. BC women finished with 44 total team points with the time of 1:41:57 with an average time of 20:23.40.
Jessica Campbell led the charge with a second place finish for the Renegades posting the time of 19:08. She (Campbell) was one of five Renegades to finish in the top 14 of the 5K run.
Campbell said after the race that she felt really good about the outcome because she set a personal record time-wise by 47 seconds.
“It was awesome, we had been working really hard in practice and it’s great to see our performances worked really well during the race,” Campbell said.
BC had six runners in the top 25, Paola Silvestre finished in 21st place with the time of 22:16.00, Moriah Millwee finished 14th (21:02.00), Amber Cruz finished 12th (20:41.00), Leah Theroux 11th (20:39.00) and Orieth Rodriquez took 8th place with the time of 20:27.00.
BC defeated College of the Canyons for the first time in three tries this season, edging the Cougars by eight points.
“It was nice to come out and beat them,” BC coach Dave Frickel said on his women’s team beating Canyons. “Campbell described it as an ‘amazing feeling.’”
College of the Sequoias was only able to manage a third place victory, Yesenia Silva of Sequoias pulled out the first place finish for her school with the time of 17:47.00 and helped the Giants gain 58 points, placing them in a third place tie with Ventura College.
Sequoias College finished with a team time of 1:43:37 with the average time of 20:43:40 while Ventura was able to finish in 1:44:43 with the average of 20:56.60.
Canyons finished in second place with the score of 52 points and the team time of 1:44:21 and the average time of 20:52.20. Canyons also had three runners to finish in the top 10 and two in the top five. West Hills College and Allan Hancock College were the other two teams to compete in the Invitational.
It was a different story with the men, who finished in fourth place with a team score of 95 in 1:56:35 and an average time of 23:19.00.
Canyons and Sequoias had a combined nine runners in the top 10 of the rankings. Canyons won with 27 points and finished with the time of 1:46:02 and an average time of 21:12.40. They had five runners to finish in the top ten, Rodrigo Ornelas won the race with the time of 20:28.00 and teammate Robert Pion took second in 20:40.00.
Second place Sequoias had three top five finishers and had 33 points as a team and finished at 1:47:17 with the average time of 21:27.40. West Hills had 127 points with the time of 2:05:47 and the average of 25:09.40 and finished in fifth place.
In the Western State Conference Preview Meet on Oct. 4 BC women took fourth overall in a 14 team meet with the time of 1:56:52.29 and the average time of 23:22.46 with 129 points. Campbell was the top finisher for BC coming in 14th place and recorded the time of 22:38.90.
BC’s next meet will be Oct. 11 at the Santa Barbara Invitational.