
Women Racers Place Sixth at SoCal Championships, Advance to State Championship Meet
ENCINO -- Posting a sixth-place finish at the Southern California Regional Championship meet, the Riverside City College (RCC) Tigers women's cross country squad has punched its ticket for the state championship meet which will be held in two weeks.
Riverside, which compiled 194 points, finished only ten points out of fourth place over the five-kilometer (3.1 miles) course.
Glendale College won the meet with 61 points, followed by Mt. San Antonio College (79 points), College of the Canyons (113 points), Cerritos College (184 points), and Southwestern College (187 points) to round out the top five.
San Diego Mesa College placed sixth as well with 194 points, along with RCC, San Bernardino Valley College was eighth (289 points), Bakersfield College was ninth (292 points) and Cuyamaca College was tenth (306 points).
Southwestern's Aminat Olowora won the race with a time of 17:31.36.
The Tigers' top finisher, once again, was frosh Brianna Jacklin (Riverside / M.L. King '14), who was 14th overall (18:56.17). Jacklin bettered her time by 25 seconds from running at the same course nearly a month ago.
Rounding out the Tigers' top five finishers were frosh Crystal Tejeda (Riverside / Norte Vista '14), who was 36th overall (19:41.86), frosh Maria Morales (Riverside / Poly '14), who was 37th overall (19:42.64), sophomore Isi Ibarra (Highland / San Gorgonio '13), who was 47th overall (19:58.32), and frosh Laura Diaz-Barbosa (Jurupa Valley / Rubidoux '14), who finished 60th overall (20:13.57).
All lady Tigers had an improvement in their course time from 1 month ago.
"We need have to work on closing our gap back to 30 seconds over the next two weeks," said RCC head women's cross country coach Damien Smith. "If we can accomplish that, we could have a shot on making the podium at the State Championship race. I am very proud of this team,"continued Smith.
The Tigers next compete at the state championship meet at Woodward Park in Fresno on Saturday, Nov. 22, at 10 a.m.