by Christian A. Lopez
Staff Writer
Saturday’s cool temperatures provided favorable conditions for the University of La Verne men’s and women’s cross country teams as they traveled to UC Riverside for the Riverside Cross Country Invitational.
The men’s team was led by junior Lucas Neubauer, who not only had the 24th best time out of 215 runners, but set a new school record for La Verne on the 8,000 meter course with a time of 26 minutes, 38 seconds. “It feels good to know that my name will have a spot in the record books for ever,” Neubauer said of his record breaking performance on Riverside’s Citrus Experiment Course.
Neubauer credited his coach’s guidance and his extra weekend training for his outstanding run which was just two minutes shy of first place finisher Steve Frisone of Cal Coast who finished in 24:46.
The men’s team finished 15th overall out of 21 schools with an average time of 28:53. Coach Pat Widolff commented after, “I am really pleased with the men’s performance, I thought they ran really well.”
Also contributing to the men’s strong output was Sergio Rojas who finished 101 with a 28:15 time.
The women’s team had the misfortune of being one runner short of the five that is needed to be eligible as a team, but were still able to compete in the meet. Junior Leti Arroyo had a good individual performance with a 20:31 time on the 5000 meter course, placing 64th out of 210 runners.
The women’s ineligibility does not concern coach Widolff at this point because these meets are just invitationals. His main concern is to have both his men’s and women’s teams ready for the Oct. 28 conference meet.
“We are trying to get everyone at their peak and running their best so we can be ready come October. That’s when it really counts,” said Widolff.
The team’s next meet is tomorrow at the Stanford Invitational. The race will begin at 4 p.m.
