Kingsmen & Regals Cross-Country

The Kingsmen and Regals cross-country team took on Division II, NAIA, and fellow SCIAC opponents in their last preseason meet.

The California Lutheran University cross-country team trained for running in the 92-degree heat at the seventh annual Pomona-Pitzer Invitational on Saturday, Oct. 4.

According to CLUsports.com, this was their last race for the pre-season. The team is now on its way to league competition.

The Kingsmen ran a distance of eight kilometers and finished in 15^th place with an average time of 27:41.58.

According to CLUsports.com, junior Garret Baker led the pack with a time of 26:36.1. Juniors Ryan Perez Nick Privitelli and David Avila followed shortly after with times of 27:24.0, 27:43.3 and 28:15.4. Senior Matthew Garvin was the last scoring of the Kingsmen with a time of 28:29.1.

Although individual times are important, it is also a team effort.

“As a team we showed some improvement from last year but we’re not where we want to be,” Baker said. “But we’re in the middle of the season so it’s the dog days of running. We’re definitely going to start to taper and start to do easier workouts so our legs will come back and we should be feeling more fresh for later in the season.”

For the Regals, there were also some adjustments to make.

“It was our first 6K for women this year so that was pretty exciting for them to get used to since the first two races were 5Ks but all of our conference meets for the rest of the year will be 6Ks so it was a little bit of an adjustment for some of them,” said Brett Halvaks, assistant coach.

The Regals finished in 10^th place with an average time of 24:42.14. According to CLUsports.com, the Regals who scored for the team were senior Taelor Young with a time of 23:48.9, followed by sophomore Sarah Parsons with a time of 23:52.0. Junior Kendahl Waalk finished with a time of 24:27.6, senior Amanda Miller with a time of 24:40.4, and freshman Sarah Girgis with the time of 26:41.8.

“Seeing my teammates in front of me pushed me to want to go faster,” sophomore Kelsey Lewis said. Mental strength is something she wants to work on, and something she says is very important in this sport.

The team got to race against most of the teams in the Southern California Intercollegiate Athletic Conference and also teams from higher divisions.

“Being in a race with guys who we don’t really race against really helps. [It] makes you a little more fired up and it brings the best out of you,” Baker said.

The SCIAC Championships take place on Nov. 1, and that is the team’s main focus.

“I think there’s a couple things we need to alter. . .we’re trying to gear up for the SCIAC championship race on Nov. 1 and that’s our big race,” Halvaks said.

Halvaks sees room for improvement and knows exactly what the team needs to work on.

“We need to work on our pacing and be more consistent. Some of our athletes went out a little hard today in their first mile and then kind of faded a little bit during the middle portions on the races. We definitely need to work on improving the pacing a little bit and staying a little more consistent throughout rather than going out too fast and then fading,” Halvaks said.

Halvaks said that out of the 19 people who ran today for Cal Lutheran, about 25 percent of them broke a personal record. He said they all have been training really hard.

Isabel Kirsch

Staff Writer

Published October 8, 2014