Warrior boys 13th at CIF cross country meet

Fallbrook High School’s boys’ cross country team placed 13th among Division II schools at the CIF San Diego Section meet, Nov. 17, on the Morley Field course in San Diego.

The Warriors accumulated 381 points, which are based on the positions of a team’s first five finishers. Valhalla High School had 324 points for the 12th-place Division II finish, while Southwest High School in San Diego totaled 397 points to place 14th among the 19 schools with the minimum five runners to obtain a team score.

“We did what we did,” Fallbrook assistant coach Joel Rivera said, who oversaw the Warriors at the CIF meet since head coach Marco Arias had an administration training session that day.

The course was 2.96 miles and 128 harriers including seven Warriors competed in the Division II boys race. Fallbrook junior Josh Hernandez placed 49th with a time of 16 minutes 41.4 seconds.

“Josh had a great race,” Rivera said.

“It was a good experience,” Hernandez said. “It’s a good learning experience for next year.”

The next Fallbrook finisher was sophomore Danny Contreras, whose time of 16:54.4 gave him 61st place.

“Danny ran a great race for a sophomore,” Rivera said.

“It felt good,” Contreras said. “I was kind of disappointed my first mile. I went a little too fast.”

In the past the course has been longer and runners ascended the westbound hill multiple times. The year the course had an alternate route.

“They only run the hill once, so that kind of threw the boys off,” Rivera said.

John Regan is a junior but transferred to Fallbrook High School from North Carolina, so this year’s CIF section meet was his first. He posted a time of 17:38.6 for 86th place.

Fallbrook’s other four runners at the CIF meet are also juniors: Angel Gonzalez had the 88th-place time of 17:40.0, Osvaldo Urbina finished in 17:56.3 for 97th place, Tristan Suppe was the 110th runner across the finish line and had a time of 18:24.3 and Andres Martinez had a time of 19:22.0 which gave him 122nd place.

The Warriors were fifth in the six-team Valley League standings, but none of this year’s Fallbrook runners are seniors.

“If we actually train hard in the summer, we can actually win league next year,” Rivera said.