DVC’s cross country teams head to the state championships Saturday at Fresno’s Woodward Park.

Despite earlier doubts about qualifying, both the men and women’s teams did so by placing 8th in the NorCal Regional conference.

The men’s team placed 8th out of 17 teams, and the women’s team placed 8th out of 13 teams at the conference on Oct. 30 at Oak Grove Park.

The men went into the NorCal regionals in 11th place, one place away from the needed 10th place to qualify. Also, one of the team’s top runners, Chris Sanchez, was feeling ill at race time.

“We mentally prepared to do the best we could do,” said head coach Daniel Cruz. “Then they rallied together and applied themselves”

“I was really surprised when we made it to state,” said runner Jake Enemark.

The scoring runners included Enemark, Jeremy Rubio, Tony Roberts, Chuck Buck-Bauer and Chris Sanchez who placed 13th, 29th, 36th, 83rd and 93rd respectively out of 115 runners.

The women entered the conference in 8th place. Since the team was in a comfortable position, and star runner Brianna McCready was recovering from an injury, Cruz instructed them to run conservatively.

“We did pretty good, but I know we can do better at state,” said team captain Alex Morse.

Scoring runners included Amanda Ray, Brianna McCready, Pilar Hastings-Smith, Nicky Wall and Bronze Adams. They finished 31st, 36th, 37th, 41st and 59th respectively out of 97 runners.

Cruz said he hopes the teams will remain healthy in the lead-up to state. Last year, DVC could only field three runners from each team due to illness.