The Aliso Girls Cross Country Team is making a late push in hopes of a CIF playoff berth.
Following the Woodbridge Classic, the Girls Cross Country team ran in the Central Park Invitational.
The way scoring works in the cross-country meets is through a points system. The highest finisher receives one point, and then points are added on per place finished in. The team with the lowest amount of points wins. Aliso finished in the middle of the pack in a very competitive race, with the Wolverines finishing in twentieth place out of 35 total teams.
The most notable finisher for Aliso was junior Camila Abarca, who came in forty-fourth place.
The girls’ last race was in the Orange County Championships.
Abarca gave the “Growling Wolverine” some additional information about what the conditions looked like for this event, held locally at Irvine Regional Park.
“The Orange County Championships is usually known for putting up really fast times. This year it was really windy, the dust filled the air, so the conditions were not as great as usual, and the times also were not as fast as we hoped. However, we still raced competitively and took home a third-place team trophy in the Varsity race.”
Aliso earned a cumulative 131 points, only finishing behind El Dorado High School and Huntington Beach High School.
Abarca was once again blistering for the Wolverines, finishing seventh overall in the medium school varsity race. Junior Aubrey Fletcher and freshman Nadia Bonfanti finished in second and third for the Wolverines. All three of the girls placed in the top 20 for the race.
The final races of the season are up next for the girls, with the infamous Mt. SAC races coming up, as well as the league finals and then CIF Prelims.
CIF will be challenging for the girls this year to achieve according to Abarca.
“Qualifying for CIF will be more difficult than previous years because two very competitive schools, Tersoro and Beckman, have moved into our league. It will take all seven of the girls on varsity achieving a new PR at league finals to prove that our current ranking among other schools is an inaccurate representation of our team in order to make it to CIF this year.”
The girls have been working hard to turn this hard challenge at hand into an achievable goal.
“We’ve been working hard all season and pacing ourselves at practice to make sure we reach the peak of our season in three weeks at league finals.”
Abarca is full of praise for her teammates’ work this season as well.
“As team captain, I have the best first hand account of all the work each of the girls have been putting in since July, so I can confidently say that I have lots of faith in our success at league finals and our progression as a team onto CIF.”
Ava O’Berry (12), the other team captain for the Wolverines, says, “I am genuinely proud of all of the hard work that the girls put in this season. We all want to get new personal records by the end of the year, and I definitely believe we have the ability to do so.”
The girls are racing in Mount SAC starting on Friday, Oct. 25.
