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VC Men's & Women's Cross Country Both Qualify for State

The Ventura College men's and women's cross country teams qualified for the CCCAA State Championships withe their performance at the South California Regional Finals, at Irvine Regional Park Friday. The women, who came into the meet ranked No. 11 in SoCal, exceeded their projection with their best team race of the year placing eighth. The men punched their ticket to state with an 11th place team finish of the 28 competing teams.

Marissa Gonzales finished 36th in the SoCal Regionals to lead the Pirates into the state championships in two weeks. The VC women placed eighth as a team and the men placed 11th, both qualifying for state.
Marissa Gonzales finished 36th in the SoCal Regionals to lead the Pirates into the state championships in two weeks. The VC women placed eighth as a team and the men placed 11th, both qualifying for state.
Results
November 4, 2016

The Ventura College men's and women's cross country teams qualified for the CCCAA State Championships withe their performance at the South California Regional Finals, at Irvine Regional Park Friday.  The women, who came into the meet ranked No. 11 in SoCal, exceeded their projection with their best team race of the year placing eighth.  The men punched their ticket to state with an 11th place team finish of the 28 competing teams.

Marissa Gonzales lead the Pirate women placing 36th out of 185 runners (35 team points) in 19:57.  She was followed to the finish line by Macy Schmidt (39th, 20:05, 38), Fabiola Gomez-Flores (54th, 20:34, 52), Kenna Perez (69th, 20:59, 66), Amanda Wendt (83rd, 21:23, 78), Tati Morales (105th, 22:15, 100), and Veronica Lavin (106th, 22:16, 101).

Glendale, Riverside, Mt. San Antonio, Saddleback, Los Angeles Harbor, Cuesta, and Canyons lead the Pirates in the scoring column, with four of the top eight teams coming from the Western State Conference.  The Pirates easily qualified for state as the top 14 teams qualified.

The Pirate men also punched their state meet ticket placing 11th overall despite entering the meet unranked.  They ran past six teams who were ranked higher coming into the race. Nestor Rodriguez led the Pirate men for the second consecutive meet, finishing 42nd out of 197 in a time of 21:34 for the 4-mile course. Alex Ambriz (48th, 21:41), Jesse Vasquez (72nd, 22:09), Christian Gil (82nd, 22:20), Jose Tamayo (100th, 22:34), David Torres (107th, 22:42, 106 team points), and Ernie Nombrano (124th, 23:08, 121) rounded out the seven pirate scorers. 

San Bernardino Valley, Glendale, Mt. San Antonio, Cuyamaca, Riverside, Santa Ana, Orange Coast, Cuesta, Saddleback, and El Camino were the top top 10 scoring schools ahead of the Pirates.  The WSC had five of the 14 state qualifying teams.

"Both team performed so well today," commented head coach Tony Veney. "As they have all season, the men kept their team differential (time gap between the No. 1 and  No.5) at 60 seconds or better, which is an indication of really good team running. In this meet, their gap was exactly 60 seconds!

"The women's team gap all season averaged a troubling three minutes, but this day the Ladies really pulled together, cutting their team gap in half down to a respectable 1:26.

The Pirates get two weeks to tune up for the state championships in Fresno.  The races will be held on Saturday Nov. 19 with the women's race going off at 10:00 am followed by the men at 11:00am.