Aliso Niguel competed in their second race at Laguna Hills High School, followed by an impressive showing at the Annual Woodbridge Cross Country Classic on Sept. 20-21.
Aliso had their second meet of the season at the Annual Laguna Hills Cross Country Invitational where they scored second just behind Portola High School. Aliso had a 2:52 minute spread between their runners.
Farris Radieddine (12), Aliso’s star runner placed second in the Senior D1 category with a time of 15:40.2. Following Radieddine was Anderson Blattner (12) and Lucas Morris (12), Blattner running a 16:17.5 with Morris following just two seconds behind.
This meet was in preparation for the upcoming forty-third Woodbridge Classic where most of the boys would run their best times.
This meet consisted of a three-mile race course at the Orange County Great Park. This was Aliso’s third race of the season with just four more to go until CIF.
Aliso came in 10th place with a total of 410 points and a low spread between runners of only 39 seconds between their first five runners.
Unfortunately, Aliso didn’t place as well as they had hoped because one of their key runners took a devastating fall during the race putting him behind other runners. Another reason Aliso didn’t do as well was because of one runner who was out sick.
Radieddine, placed in 40 with a time of 14:56.6, a new personal record. This put him fifth in Aliso’s fastest three-mile times.
Blattner came in at 73 just 16 seconds behind Faris but with 33 runners in between.
Blattner states, “My last meet went well. I ran a 15:12 which is a 55-second personal record from my previous 16:07.”
For the first two miles of the race Karson Brunke (11), Morris, and Blattner stuck together until Blattner broke off to go ahead. Before the race, Brunke gave a motivating speech to push his teammates to do their best.
Unfortunately, Brunke did not set a personal record but still had a positive attitude about his team’s performance after the race.
Brunke says, “As a team, we have been working on motivating each other during workouts and pushing each other to work harder. Our team is almost like a friend group which motivates us to work harder.”
Morris and Brunke raced together finishing with just mere milliseconds between them with Morris at 15:25.3 and Brunke at 15:25.9. They placed 97 and 98 respectively.
Morris says, “I believe my 15:25 for the three-mile placed me in the top 15 in school history. I got a medal and overall I was proud of my performance!”
Aliso has another meet coming up the Central Park Invitational on Oct. 5. They have had a good previous record at this meet and hope to keep improving on their times.
The Aliso Boys have a strong season ahead of them, already placing records and being able to compete with strong teams. As they continue to race, many of them hope to make CIF.
