Last season the boys’ varsity cross country team lost their league title that they held for the past two seasons. But Head Coach Steven Munoz and the team have plans to regain that title. Munoz believes their team’s strengths this year are having senior Fernando Herrera, who gets the team one point almost every single race. “We don’t have that one two punch that we had last year,” he said, “but our second through fifth guys are all very close to one another.” Herrera believes the team’s strengths is the training they do outside of running. “We do weight and cross training that helps us become stronger runners. It also allows us to bond since we are all putting in the effort to make sure we can win this season,” Herrera said.

The team returns seniors Herrera, Noah Rodriguez, Joe Montoya and junior Raul Martinez. In addition, juniors Ruben Rocha and Elvin Hernandez, who didn’t run last year, as well as sophomore Alexander Chavez, have made solid contributions.  “We didn’t have the depth, necessarily returning from last year,” Munoz said. “However, with Alex, as well as like Rubin and Elvin, them coming back helped fill in some roles that we lost.”

At the 44th Annual Woodbridge Cross Country Classic the team placed 9th overall which was an improvement from last year. “It was outstanding team wise,” Munoz said.  “We went from 18th last year to ninth this year, and then individually, most of the guys broke their PR in the two mile and they still had another mile to go.” 

Herrera made history, getting a time of 14:45, which was the first time any Alisal athlete went under 15 minutes, and Munoz couldn’t be prouder. “It was a special moment,” he said.“I knew it was possible because I saw people doing it and I felt it was just a matter of time for an Alisal athlete to do it. But I wasn’t sure that I was gonna be the coach to help that athlete do that, maybe it was self consciousness of myself but it was a special, special moment.” 

At the Salinas City Championships, Munoz said it was more for bragging rights and it doesn’t count towards any record. “It’s just more bragging to say ‘Hey, we are still the best in the city,” Munoz said.

At Center Meet 1, the team was solid, earning second place overall. “We had a lot of good performances, Munoz said. “Those that had been running sick had come back from that sickness and were able to step up pretty big for us. We had a few mistakes from some of the runners that hopefully we’ll be able to learn from and correct.” Rodriguez felt satisfied with his performance. “Center Meet 1 was one of my best races,” he said. “I started in the back of the race and made my way up and ended up finishing seventh helping us get second place by breaking up the top four Monte Vista Christian runners.”

At Center Meet 2, the team placed second again, but Munoz was hoping for a better outcome. “All of them ran a personal best on that course [Toro Park] so that’s the most you can ask for but unfortunately it wasn’t enough,” he said. “Monte Vista is a beatable team, we just didn’t help ourselves by moving with the guys that were taking over the race.”

According to Munoz we can still win the title, but 1 of 2 scenarios need to play out. First, they get 2nd at Center Meet 3 and win at PCAL and they will share the title; or they get 1st at Center Meet 3 and PCAL and become outright champions.

Munoz said the winning strategy involves “our chase boys making sure that our two and three break up the Monta Vista group.” Herrera said, “The team needs to run together and work off each other to be able to move up places and ultimately break up the MVC group. Doing that will prepare us to go to battle at Center Meet 3 and PCALs.”