Irma Torres placed 7th in her race with a time of 18:57 becoming Fillmore High School's fastest freshman on the Seaside Invitational course.

(l-r) Kimberly Vasquez and Briana Segoviano.

In an amazing season opener at the Ventura State Beach on Friday the Cross Country team powered their way over the 3 mile course to earn high accolades. Several freshmen had break out first races while the old grizzled veterans strutted their stuff and bettered themselves on the blistering course to earn personal records (PR), medals, and placings.

Freshman Irma Torres started the day off right with her impressive 7th place finish to earn her the first medal of the day. There were 271 freshman athletes in the women’s race. In the women’s sophomore race Sofia Gallardo and Alexis Tafoya both set personal bests with a 1:15 second improvement from last year for Sofia and a 1:56 reduction for Alexis. In addition to the biggest female improvement on the day, Alexis also snagged some hardware in the form of a medal with her 28th place finish. There were 279 sophomores in the women’s race. In the women’s junior race Jordyn Vassaur ran a 53 second improvement narrowly missing a medal with her 52nd place finish. There were 236 junior women in the race. The top five women ran a respectable team time of 1:02:35.
On the men’s side of the gender divide, sophomore Isai “EZ” Bolanos had a breakout race with a 4:14 improvement from last year. He must have eaten his Wheaties. Also making an impression for the sophomore men was Jorge Hurtado. Jorge placed 49th out of 364 to earn a medal. Juniors Mario Gaspar and Nico Frias also hit big PR’s with Mario obtaining a 2:58 second bettering and Nico hitting a 2:28 improvement. Nico also finished 28th out of 320 to earn the right to a medal around his neck as well.

But it was the men’s seniors who distinguished themselves at the Seaside Invitational. They took 2nd place overall as a senior group out of 30 senior teams and 6th best overall as a team. The veteran and vastly experienced varsity team had all 5 scorers under 15:34 and a 5 man time spread of 6.79 seconds, virtually unheard of in a cross country race. 6 of the boys earned medals. Isaac Gomez was 19th. Hugo Valdovinos was 20th while Adrian Mejia was 21st. Alexander Frias was 25th and Anthony Rivas was 29th. Jose Almaguer placed 39th. Their combined efforts resulted in a 4:56 team time improvement over last year to finish in a combined 77:29. This places the team as tied for 14th on the all-time best boys list for the meet. In addition for the 2nd week in a row the boys are ranked #1 in CIF Division 4 Southern Section.