The Long Beach Poly boys’ cross country team had a successful trip to Clovis for the CIF State Division 1 championship, where senior Will Frankenfeld finished third overall as an individual and the team finished sixth.
“It was a great trip, the guys performed well in a super competitive race,” said Poly coach Mike Fillipow. “We had two guys who’ve never run on the course before and they ran well, and our other five guys all set course PRs–we ran the third-fastest team time on that course that we’ve ever run.”
The Poly team time was 1:19:22, an average of 15:53 per runner on the three-mile course. Frankenfeld finished in 15:08 to take third, just four seconds off the lead.
“He ran great, he was aggressive and in perfect position,” said Fillipow.
Frankenfeld had options as far as national meets but chose to go with the Foot Locker Nationals route over the Nike Cross Country Nationals. Frankenfeld will run in this Saturday’s Foot Locker West Regional, needing to finish in the top 10 at the Mt. SAC course to make it to the Foot Locker Nationals race, which no Long Beach runner has ever run in.
Junior Ronan McMahon-Staggs finished 47th in 15:53, Daniel Bautista was 61st in 16:02, Alex Matos was 74th in 16:08, Zane Witter was 76th in 16:08.05, Chris Yontz was 108th in 16:26, and Devin Koval was 111th in 16:28.
