Guymon girls and boys cross country teams 4th and 5th at regional meet

October 23, 2012

The fourth place Guymon High school girls team. Medalists are, from left, Paige Nelson, Karina Mejia, Annie Pierce, Alejandra Alvidrez, Kasey Garcia, Nayeli Mesta and Glenda Barboza. Courtesy photo/Andy Brown

The following recaps the Guymon High School cross country team at the regional meet at Norman and the Guymon Junior High team at the Junior High All-Star Meet in Oklahoma City.

By ANDY BROWN
Special to the GDH

This past weekend the varsity boys and girls teams traveled to Norman to compete in the Class 5A regional meet. The top seven teams and top seven individuals on non-qualifying teams would earn a trip to the state meet.
The Guymon girls started off the afternoon by placing fourth in the team standings earning their third trip to the state meet in a row.
Top ranked Shawnee won the meet with 29 points, followed by Deer Creek (86) and Carl Albert (94).
Guymon scored 128 points and were 46 points ahead of fifth place Durant. There were 14 teams competing in the race and 113 total runners.
Annie Pierce earned a medal and ran her fastest time of the season placing 12th and running a 13:12 for the two mile course.
Seniors, Kasey Garcia placed 24th and Alejandra Alvidrez 26th. Paige Nelson (41), Karina Mejia (43) , Nayeli Mesta (49) and Glenda Barboza (50) rounded out the remaining scorers for the team. The girls ran a 13:51 team average, which was seven seconds off of the school record they set earlier in the year at the OSU Jamboree. The girls have run much faster this year and will be looking to place inside the top six at the state meet. The girls placed ninth last year.
The boy’s team placed fifth in the meet scoring 163 team points. Deer Creek won the meet with 24 points, followed by Duncan, Durant and Guthrie. There were 18 teams competing in the race and 129 runners. The boys ran a team average time of 18:22. Leading the charge was Cory Nunez who placed 14th and earned a medal. He ran a season best time of 17:33. He was followed by Kassius Urquiza (23), Derek Portillo (28), Angel Vega (48).
“I think we left a lot out on the table for this meet and we will be ready to run much faster at state. Our main goal was to not push it too hard and qualify easily and save some gas in the tank for state. Our team is young and we do not have a lot of depth, so there is not a lot of room for someone to have a bad race. If we are going to place inside the top five at the state meet everyone has to run their best race of the season,” said Guymon head coach Andy Brown.
Both the boys and the girls have been training for six months and they will be ready this weekend.
Junior high meet
Forty-one junior high runners ran in the 19th annual Junior High All-Star Cross Country meet in Woodson Park in Oklahoma City this past Friday.
The boy’s team ran a close race with Santa Fe South and came up two points shy of first place and settled for second. The boys were well ahead of third place Tulsa Metro Christian.
Dylan Portillo placed third in the 4A/5A boy’s meet running 11:06 for the 2-mile course. Eli Herrera was close behind in fifth.
Eight other JH boys medaled in the race, achieving All-Star status: Angel Valle, Kevin Lozano, Ernesto Herrera, Justin Stonecipher, Jorge Hidalgo, Pablo Peralta, Isaac Peralta and Alex Amador.
The girl’s team placed third out of nine teams competing and had three girls earn all-star recognition. Keiry Fernandez, Kendy Salinas and Saw Ahmara ran well for the Lady Tigers. Places and times were unavailable and will be uploaded on ohstrack.com at a later date.
The junior high teams had a very successful season. Many runners started the season in late May and have been training for six months and it showed with the amount of success they had. The girl’s team won two meets and the junior high boys won four. Our program numbers were up and there are many talented eighth graders ready to run at the high school next year.
The boys and girls high school teams will compete at the state meet this Saturday at Edmond Santa Fe High School in Edmond. The girls run at noon and the boys at 12:45 p.m.