Strong races at Stanford and San Bernardino for cross country teams
The CMS cross country teams competed at two meets over the weekend with the top group competing at the Stanford Invitational and the rest of the team running at the Cal State San Bernardino Invitational.
The Stags finished third among the non-Division I teams at Stanford with 130 points in one of the top performances in CMS regular season history. They finished behind only ranked Division II schools Chico State (#4) and UC San Diego (#16) and beat 11 Division II teams and all six other Division III teams. The Athenas finished fifth among the non-Division I teams with 143 points. They finished behind University of Victoria, one of the top teams in Canada, Chico State (D2 #5), Simon Fraser (D2 #9) and UC San Diego (D2 #14). The women beat nine Division II teams and also beat all the other DIII schools.
Zorg Loustalet led the Stags to one of their best ever team times with a personal best of 24:28 while finishing 31st in the 362-runner field. The scoring five averaged 25:00.8 as Garrett Ryan (24:45), Alex Lombardo (24:59), Alex Mauro (25:26) and Jack Wilson (25:26) also turned in personal best times. A CMS record nine Stags broke 26:00 with Sam Pitcavage (25:26), Nico Banks (25:43), Justin Jones (25:56) and Kevin Huang (25:56) turning in the fastest times ever recorded for a CMS sixth, seventh, eighth and ninth runner.
Sara Mostatabi ran 22:10 to lead the Athenas with a 45th place finish in the 330-runner field. Freshman Bryn McKillop led a strong underclass group in 22:40. Senior Taia Wu (23:04) was the lone upperclassman in the group of seven that finished in a 51-second spread. She was followed by sophomores Caroline Willian (23:10) and Jen Lehr (23:19), freshman Breanna Sewell (23:34) and sophomores Anna Shepard (23:46), Stephanie LaFace (23:50) and Rachel Mow (23:55).
At Cal State San Bernardino, both teams finished third. The Stags scored 74 points and the Athenas scored 84 points. Both teams finished behind Division II Cal Poly Pomona with the men also behind Division I Cal State Fullerton and the women behind Division II CS San Bernardino.
Four of the top five scorers for the Stags at CSUSB turned in personal bests including Hunter Olsen (26:29), Ryan Jones (26:54), Matt Cook (27:00) and Alex Mitchell (27:15). Josh Sealand finished fourth for the team. Also turning in personal bests were Ari Rubin (27:56), Brian Chmelik (28:02), Mac Hightower (28:09), Arch Robison (28:28), Dan McCabe (28:29) and J.P. Kiefer (29:23).
Olivia Carmo recorded a personal best of 23:35 leading the Athenas with a 14th place finish. Also scoring for the Athenas were Carmen Mejia, Kaitlyn Spees, Roselyn Cantu [pictured left] and Meghan Fuelling. Cantu turned in a strong effort in her first ever 6K race finishing as the team's fourth runner after being the ninth runner in the last race. Kathleen Muenzen also recorded a personal best in 24:31.
The entire team will compete at the Pomona-Pitzer Invitational this Saturday. The men will race at 7:45 and the women will race at 8:30.