Gallery • 8 Photos

Senior Adrian Negrete en route to a team best improvement, cutting over six seconds off his time.

Lake Arrowhead, CA—Arrowhead League cross-country racing opened today at Rim of the World High School, where the Colton Yellowjacket runners found themselves again in a poorly managed event that made it difficult to keep track of runner’s times and places.

Like with the Beaumont Invitational last Saturday, the lack of quality sign postings and volunteers offering directions to runners led to several athletes going off course, getting lost, or going in the wrong direction.

“Rim was unorganized on the course,” Assistant Coach Mateo Cisneros said, barely containing his frustration. “Not as bad as Beaumont, but enough.”

As challenging as it was for the Arrowhead League runners to stay on the three-mile track, the biggest challenge was with the Arrowhead League itself and its decision not to pay for a digital time tracking service, like Finished Results.

Cisneros explained the system: “It’s an archaic timing system with hand-me-down racing bibs and stickers to identify runners’ places. This system still only times Varsity runners, as well.”

This resulted in Colton’s coaching staff keeping track of their athletes’ times without an official source by which to compare and verify accuracy.

Without official times, it is now a waiting game for the Cross-Country team to find out the overall results of the meet, which are expected to be shared by Arrowhead League officials next week.

Frustrating administration aside, Colton’s runners showed strongly today. According to the coaching staff, Girls’ Varsity came in third overall, but due to inaccuracies in time reporting costing three varsity boys’ placement in their race, the Boys’ Varsity came in last.

Individual runners continued to improve. Senior Adrian Negrete, who has been solid since the Swarm Invitational, made the biggest gain, cutting over six-minutes on his time by clocking in at 20:14.0. Sophomore Briana Solis, who struggled in Beaumont, improved by over a minute, 29:48.0. And senior Alanna Anderson exploded with a two-minute, thirty-second drop in time, to 24:44.0.

Best of the day honors for the boys still goes to sophomore Juan Barron, who shaved four-seconds off his time at Swarm, dropping to 19:15.0. For the girls, senior Alma Vasquez maintained her strong performance this season with a time of 23:22.0.

Despite the challenges and setback the Yellowjackets faced at this meet, Head Coach Frank A. Ibarra was still pleased with his team’s performance. “Overall, our runners performed really well with some placing in the top 20 in both the boys and girls’ varsity. I am proud of the effort our athletes and coaches put forth today.”

Colton High School Times (Unofficial)