Cross country: Men run for ninth place at Aztec

By Jennifer Umana
Daily Forty-Niner

The Long Beach State cross country teams' second meet provided both the men and women opportunities for growth and improvement.

Both teams competed Saturday in the 57th annual Aztec Invitational at Balboa Park in San Diego. The men's team finished ninth out of 15 teams while the women finished 12th out of 16 teams.

Competing at the meet were nationally ranked men's teams Southern Utah and UC Irvine and women's teams UCI, Texas A&M and UCLA.

"There were some really outstanding teams," said Assistant Coach Dana Colligan Gutierrez. "It made the challenge more difficult."

The narrow course at Balboa Park also made the meet challenging,, which Colligan Gutierrez said made it hard for the runners to know where their teammates were.

"They had a great deal of improvement," she said of the men's squad. "They were running together much better. There were a few individuals that really stepped it up."

Finishing 15th with a time of 26 minutes, 47 seconds was freshman Aaron Durham.

"Aaron led the team," Colligan Gutierrez said. "He responded well to the difficulty of the competition."

Colligan Gutierrez said the women's performance was a learning experience.

"The women really struggled in this meet," she said. "All of them individually had races that they really learned from."

The women's team was led by senior Christine Riel who finished 21st with a time of 19:03.

The next meet scheduled for the cross country teams is Sept. 23 at the Hawaii Invitational in Oahu, Hawaii.

"The change of scenery will be exciting," said Colligan Gutierrez. The meet will also provide "more opportunities to work on individual things and help each other."

*The results of the first cross-country meet at Cal State Fullerton were incorrectly stated in a previous article. The men finished fifth out of 11 teams and the women finished fourth out of 13.