Jerel Beaty
Staff Writer
The Pirates had an impressive week as they followed their championship performance in the Islander Splash in Corpus Christi with another championship effort in Round Rock at Old Settlers Park in the HOKA Invitational which is the site of November’s State Meet.
“This meet was a great opportunity to allow some of our younger runners the opportunity to run the State course,” stated Head Coach Gilbert Ruiz, whose team took the top spot out of 35 in that early morning race. “We have two new team members and giving them the opportunity to compete now will hopefully pay dividends in November.”
Johnny Rey Alvarez, Yandel Esquivez, and Tristan Lopez all finished in the top 20 out of 286 runners in the 4A division. Bryan Montes-Rodriguez and Able Sanchez landed in the top 30.
Alvarez finished 14th with a time of 17:02. Fourteen seconds later, Esquivez crossed the line at 17:16. Lopez was 20th with a time of 17:18.
Montes-Rodriguez came in at 22nd place with a time of 17:20 and Sanchez clocked in at 17:25 in 28th place to round out the scoring for the Pirate team.
Brandon Obando was 36th with a time of 17:42 and Diego Reyna was 52nd with a time of 18-minutes flat.
“We ran in the 4A group with the hopes to run against the #2 and #3 teams in that classification, but they accepted their bid to run up on Saturday.”
Even though the #2 and #3 teams ran with the 5A division, the Pirates still had tough challengers on the course as the #6, #8, #9, and #10 teams lined up just down the way from the Lytle seven.
“There was only a gap of 23-seconds between our number one and number five runners. It may have been a combination of our top end not running well or our bottle half having a great day. I think it was a little of both.”
Whatever the case, Lytle had an outstanding day on the course, and will look forward to challenges ahead that help prep them as State competition nears. At least when the team makes it back to Round Rock, they will have the benefit of getting a good night’s rest and not having to hop on the bus before the crowing of the roosters.
We know that if we can return in a little over a month, we can fix that problem since we won’t have to leave at 4:30am to run at 8:30am.”
Congrats to the Pirates and best of luck in your process of getting back to that championship stand at the end of the season.
Top 10 team rankings
1st Lytle 101, 2nd Boerne 137, 3rd Giddings 140, 4th Life Waxahachi 151, 5th Salado 155, 6th Davenport 229, 7th Anna 272, 8th Burnet 272, 9th Alice 282, 10th Huffman Hargrave 352.