Raiders dominate dual meet

Kris Norton teaches a business class at Cibola, but said he could use some brushing up with his math skills. He is, after all, accounting for all the variables that the Raiders' cross country team has been putting into his equation for a state championship.

Cibola took the top seven spots in the boys' race while missing two of their top five runners and the girls claimed the top three. The Raiders went on to beat the Kings in both the boys (15-50) and girls (19-40) races.

Cibola's Josh Lopez took first place finishing with a time of 17 minutes 11 seconds followed immediately by Alan Fernandez at 17:11.6. Richard Clayton (17:22) finished third, Alonso Perez (18:05) fourth and Jose Guerro fifth (18:06). Kofa's Leo Berrea finished eighth at 18:55.

Michelle Soto took first place for the Raiders' girls team, clocking 21:51. Cibola's Monica Huston (21:53) was second and Amanda Martinez (22:04) third. Kofa's Amanda Garcia paced the Kings with a 22:14 to finish fourth and Ruth Hansen (22:50) rounded out the top five.

Norton said that Jose Ramirez and Ryan Norton didn't run in the meet because of minor injuries, a problem his team has faced all season.

"It’s almost like you’re getting this equation solved and all of a sudden this one variable pops up," Norton said. "You can’t find out what it is and can’t solve it."

Despite all the inconsistencies the Raiders have ran strong meets throughout the year, making wins, like Wednesday's, commonplace.

"We have our goals set pretty high and as high as we’ve got them set you’ve got to have that kind of depth," Norton said. "And so in order for us to be able to reach our goals, we have to come in and run that strong still missing a couple kids. It’s really encouraging and exciting to see."

The goal that Norton speaks of is winning a state championship, and he said that the Raiders are one of three teams who can pull it off. The other two: Phoenix-Camelback and Tucson-Ironwood Ridge.

But the Raiders won't have to wait for the state meet to see how they'll fare against their competition. On Friday Cibola heads to Queen Creek to compete in the Twilight Meet against 55 other schools.

"They’ve put us in what’s called the Sweepstakes Race for the top 20 teams in the state," Norton said. "It’ll be a pretty intense race, it’ll be more competitive than the state meet actually."

Norton said he had to be careful that he doesn't describe the meet in similar fashion to his team. "I’ve got to make sure I downplay it a little bit because we don’t want to use this as our toughest race," he said. "I’m not going to give them real fresh legs because we’ve got to train through the week, because we’re running regionals in four weeks. But it’s a good indicator of where we’re at. It’ll show us whether or not we’re capable of doing what I think we’ll be doing at the state level."

Even Josh Lopez said he is having a hard time taking his coach's advice.

"It’s kind of hard to treat it as another race," Lopez said. "For me, I’m going to focus on it being another race that’s making us better for the state meet."

On the girls' side Norton said that his team is wary of regional newcomer Lake Havasu, but that he has yet to get a good gauge as to how his team will match up against them as injuries plagued his team once more during that race.

Norton said that even he's having trouble sympathizing with some of his team's injuries.   "It takes a little bit of discipline to not throw the kid on the line tell him to run hard and go be an old school coach," he said. "Tell him to suck it up and get tough and run hard for the team. Sometimes it’s difficult to be patient, but I try to."