Valley runners make good showing at Vaquero Stampede

LAKESIDE, Calif. — Saturday’s Vaquero Stampede Invitational cross-country match at Lindo Lake Park served as the season opener for four Valley teams.

Brawley Union, Holtville and Southwest high schools were in attendance, competing in Division 3, while Calexico High School’s runners competed in Division 2.

The meet included competitors from 50 schools across three divisions. El Capitan High School was the host school.

There were 12 races on the day, with four races per division: a 1.65-mile trek for the underclassmen boys, another two at the same distance for first the ninth and 10th grade girls and then their junior and senior counterparts, and last a 2.15-mile course for the upper-class boys.

The freshman/sophomore races supplied the Valley with a few top-10 finishers: In boys Division 2, Calexico’s David Aguilar secured eighth-place with a time of 8:49. In Division 3, Southwest got sixth and eighth place finishes from Edgar Hernandez (8:55) and Hector Cazares (9:06), which helped them to a team score of 136 (team scores are the sum of a school’s top 5 places in a race — if a school fails to field five runners in a race, they cannot place as a team), which was good for fifth out of 12 qualified schools.

In D3, Brawley’s Jaasiel Contreras managed to nab second with a time of 9:50, and Southwest’s Sidney Garcia slid into tenth at 10:59.

Kristinna Olmedo finished tenth out of 84 upper-class girls in D2 for Calexico, clocking in at 10:22, and Alissa Moreno of Brawley took second in her race, finishing in 10:34. She was followed by a couple of Southwest runners: sixth place, Ayleen Castillo (11:14), and 10th place Arlene Castillo (11:20).

For Valley residents, the highlight of the day’s races came in the Division 3 2.15-miler, where Cristopher Carrillo of Brawley finished first out of 78 participants, completing the course in 11:19. Cristopher ran a solid all-around race. Covering ground at an average speed of about 11.6 miles per hour, he quickly established himself as a front-runner, spending most of the race at or near the lead, jockeying for position with Edgar Jimenez of San Ysidro, among others.

In a good spot, but having not yet secured the win, Carillo hit the afterburners over the last 300 meters, sprinting out in front and finishing three seconds ahead of Jimenez.

Also making a go of it, were third-place Eddie Quintero (11:27) and sixth-place Fabian Rendon (11:58) of Holtville — who helped their team finish third overall with 78 points — and 10th-place Bernardo Apolinar of Southwest (12:19).