Jake Jeanson and Matt Day went 1-2 for the Westmont men, and the Warrior women won the team title Saturday at the 31st annual Westmont Cross Country Invitational.
Jeanson won the men’s 8k race in 26 minutes, 51 seconds, beating his teammate Day, who finished in 27:04. Unattached runner Ricky Dorado finished third with a time of 28:02 followed closely by Brooks Swigart of Arizona Christian (28:07) and Garrett Baker of Ventura (28:09).
Westmont head coach Russell Smelley opted to not enter the majority of his top runners on Saturday.
“Our goal this week was to train hard with the scoring runners and give the younger runners and those who haven’t always had an opportunity to be in a scoring position a chance to prove themselves,” said Smelley. “We did run our top two on the men’s side who ran very well. Jacob Jeanson needed a little bit of a confidence booster and Matt Day has been very consistent and running real well. So that was a good challenge for Jake and that got Jake to step up his game a little bit today. It was nice to see them go one-two in the race.”
Westmont finished second in the team competition with 36 points. Arizona Christian won with 33 points and Ventura Community College finished third with 51 points.
“Gerardo Soria (28:59, 11th place), Daniel Erickson (29:06, 12th place) and Tyler Freeberg (29:32, 13th place) had the experience of being scorers,” said Smelley of Westmont’s next three finishers. “They weren’t quite able to do anything with Arizona Christians’ four in front of them, but they were close enough to make me feel encouraged about their competitiveness.”
The Westtmont women won with 24 points, 20 points ahead of San Diego Christian in second. Ventura claimed third place with 71 points while Arizona Christian was fourth with 96. Providence Christian out of Pasadena placed fifth with 148 points.
“The women did exactly what we hoped,” said Smelley. “They all stepped up to being a scoring team, so they won the meet. Corinne Cherne (20:00, 3rd place) and Heidi Nicholls (20:26, 4th place) did a nice job up front of competing well. Heidi had to catch a runner (Jackie Lowry of San Diego Christian) and outran her to the finish line.”
Due to an emphasis on producing fast times to move up in the NAIA rankings, the hilly course at Westmont discouraged many collegiate coaches from including the annual event on their teams’ schedules, according to Smelley. As a result, the number of teams competing was significantly smaller.
