St. Paul, Minn. – Cal State Fullerton men's and women's cross country ran in roughly 40 degree temperatures on Saturday at Minnesota's Roy Griak Invitational. The women's team finished the 6,000-meter race in seventh place (14 teams) while the men took ninth (15 teams).
Minnesota won the women's competition with 52 points, Cal Baptist was second with 82 and South Dakota had 106 in third place. The Titans tallied 173 in seventh place.
On the men's side, Duke won with 74 points, followed by Minnesota with 77 and Harvard with 89. Fullerton tallied 221 points in ninth place.
For the women, Trinity Ruelas' 6K time of 21:47.9 was tops for the Titans as she took 12th place overall. Samantha Huerta took 15th place in her first race of the season, posting a time of 21:51.1 in 15th place. Gabrielle De La Rosa (22:30.0, 42nd), Kelsey Carroll (22:51.5, 59th) and Stephanie Cortez (23:07.1, 72nd) rounded out the top five for the Titan scorers.
"Trinity and Samantha ran at really high levels," head coach John Elders said. "I thought their races were really strong and they ran well against tough competition. All of our top five runners ended up with really strong performances."
Samuel Pimentel was the top Titan finisher with an 8K time of 25:15.0, good for 25th place overall. Jorge Sanchez took 32nd place with a time of 25:26.2 and Jacob Smith was 51st at 25:48.4. Uriel Medina (26.11.3, 66th) and Anthony Alfaro (26:16.8, 72nd) were the other two scorers for Fullerton.
"It wasn't the type of team finish that I felt we could get but the performance today still gives us optimism going forward. Sam ran a fantastic race and that time for this course was very impressive. Jorge bounced back after a tough race at UCSB and ran very well today and Uriel Medina had his best race of the year."
Next up for the Titans is the UCR Highlander Invite on October 13 in Riverside.
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