Desert Vista Cross Country enjoyed an impressive weekend at the 32nd Annual Woodbridge Cross Country Classic Saturday night, Sept. 15, in Costa Mesa, Calif. The state of California traditionally produces the nation’s best boys teams, but competing against 180 schools and several thousand competitors in one of the nation’s biggest meets, DVCC finished second out of 32 freshmen teams, third out of 37 senior teams and 11th out of 31 varsity teams.
Carter Macey finished 27th in 15 minutes flat in the sweepstakes race that drew the best runners across California and the Southwest. Ryan Smith (15:32), Jacob Walimaa (15:33), Tyler Bonebright (15:34), Alec Hoyt (15:40) and Kyle Havriliak all finished in less than 16 minutes and in the top 100, and Mitchell Bogushefsky wasn’t far behind in 16:09 on the three-mile course.
In the senior Blue race, DVCC had five of the top 44 runners: Zach Smith (20th, 16:03), Austin Tielke (21st, 16:03), Ryan Dykstra (26th, 16:08), Dylan Smith (30th, 16:11) and Spencer Clason (44th, 16:24). Nick Terreri just missed a sub-17-minute run and Dylan Quintanar grabbed the final top-100 ribbon for DV, with Chris Tang and Zack Hubbard coming agonizingly close at 101 and 102 out of 218 runners. In the freshman race, despite uncommon California temperate in the high 90s, Xavier Esparza (16:04) was runner-up, D.J. Harris (16:34) was sixth and Chris O’Brien (16:51) was 12th. Matt Anciaux, Jessen Harbertson, Jackson Snedecor, Anthony Ramirez, Joe Kretschmar, Nathan Chan and Brian Kwiecinski gave DVCC 10 of the top 100 runners out of 349 competitors. Zever McGary and Ethan Tang finished in the top 100 out of 321 sophomores and Andrew Hermanski (16:09) and Kyle Herrig (16:33) placed in the top 40 out of 276 juniors.
In all, six DVCC runners finished in less than 16 minutes, 17 in less than 17 minutes and 26 in less than 18 minutes.
“It’s good to check out the big fish in another pond,” Coach Chris Hanson said. “California runners definitely humble you, but I believe it’s the best we’ve ever finished here. We were hoping for top 10 for varsity, but we were 16th last year, so overall we improved.”
And bright times are ahead. The freshmen’s second-place finish equals the showing by this year’s super seniors back when they were ninth graders.
DVCC is back in action at the Ojo Rojo Lions Invitational in Chandler Sept. 22.