The DVC cross country team is in a “rebuilding” stage, as it breaks in new runners and deals with injuries.
Of the five male and five female athletes Coach Daniel Cruz took to the
Star runner Tony Palermini is out with an injury and unlikely to rejoin the team this season, Cruz said.
This leaves the men’s team shorthanded, which poses a problem for qualifying for the state meet.
“It takes 10 teams to qualify for NorCal, and we are right on the bubble,” Cruz said. “This is the first time we have been in this situation.”
Still, Cruz is optimistic his team will be able to break through and qualify. He pointed to new runners such as Jacob Enemark, who is ranked No. 6, according to the official NorCal rankings.
“Our kids work hard, and we are going to make it…into the top eight or top 10 teams,” Cruz said.
Men’s team captain, Tony Roberts, expresses similar optimism.
“We are gluing it together and by the end of the season we will have a good solid team for state,” he said.
On the women’s side, Cruz is less worried. The women’s team took fourth in championships last year, and Cruz believes they will do similarly well this year.
Members, such as star runner Brianna McCready, contribute by generally placing high on the bracket. McCready is ranked No. 4, according to official NorCal rankings.
“We are going to win,” said team captain Alex Morse. “We will be high up there.”
The team’s rankings have gone up gradually over the semester, meet by meet.
At the Shasta College Cross Country Invitational on Sept. 20, DVC’s men and women’s teams ranked eighth and 10th respectively.
At the Lou Vasquez invitational on Sept. 25, the men placed 11th, while the women placed sixth.
Only the women’s team competed at the Crystal Springs Invitational on Oct. 3, where they placed fourth overall.
And at the 7th Annual Viking Invitational on Oct. 10, the women placed first and the men placed third. The event at