West Coast Gazelles
in Spokane
USATF JO's 2006 Cross Country

by Jim Ratigan

December 9th, 2006 competition
Greater Upland-Rancho Cucamonga-Alta Loma Club

West Coast Gazelle’s in Spokane

The youth boys division was very, very competitive this season in USATF Junior Olympics in the Southern California Association. The Equalizers, So Cal Roadrunners and West Coast Gazelle's all had excellent teams in the 13-14 year old age group. At the regional meet in Boulder City, Nevada nine points separated the top three teams with the Gazelle's winning with an injured fifth man, the Roadrunners without Daniel Rosales (eventual national champ!), and the Equalizers without Hailu Hitchman. At the Association meet the Equalizers easily took first with the Roadrunners and Gazelle's finishing second and third separated by three points. In Spokane three of the tops four teams were from Southern California. The Equalizers took first, with the So Cal Roadrunners in second and the West Coast Gazelle’s in fourth. Pretty good representation from the Los Angeles area.

The West Coast Gazelle's were extremely young on the side of running experience. Our top finisher at nationals, Albert Cisneros (8th grade Pioneer Jr. High-Upland) has only been running for slightly over a year. He was the second fastest 13 year old in the race with his 28th place finish. Not bad considering he fell at about 600 meters into the race. Our number two runner was Rancho Cucamonga High School sophomore Martin Sanchez, also a soccer player (Love them soccer players!). Our number three, A.J. Licon, is a freshman at Alta Loma High School. A.J. was the top freshman in the Baseline League this fall and is in his first season of running cross country.  The Gazelle’s number four, Luis Gutierrez, is a 7th grader at Alta Loma Junior High who started running in October. He comes from a soccer background also. In his first two cross country races, Luis broke the course record each time by a considerable margin. Our number five, Daniel Hawkins, is in 8th grade at Vineyard Junior High in Rancho Cucamonga. He is probably the most improved runner from regional to nationals. He is an age group swimmer who was injured before the association meet and had run only a few days prior to the regional (he finished 36th in Boulder City over a minute and a half behind our #1). After regional meet I eased him back slowly to running every other day and modified his workouts. That paid off as he finished 69th in Spokane. From his first day of running to the national meet, Daniel ran a total of about 20 days. He had never run seriously before his
first race in late October. All said the West Coast Gazelle's had a 1-5 gap of 31 seconds.

We were hoping for a strong showing in Spokane and when looking back at where the team has come from, we did pretty well. Seven of the eight team members are from Rancho Cucamonga, with the exception being 8th grader Kevin Rahn from Grace Yokely in Ontario.

The Gazelle's also took tenth in both the midget boys race and the intermediate boys. Calvin Davis led the midget boys with his 6th place finish, a big improvement from 77th last year.

Last year the Gazelle’s took 6 runners to Rhode Island. This year we had 22 qualify for Spokane with two teams winning the region, one taking second and the lone female, Melissa Telon from Rancho Cucamonga HS (3rd in Baseline League) all making the trek to Washington.