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The cross-country community will converge on Mt. San Antonio College this weekend for the 2021 CIF-SS/Ford Cross-Country Championships prelims, held this Friday and Saturday. The Long Beach area will have a handful of teams and individuals competing this weekend, hoping to qualify for the chance to run for a CIF championship the following weekend.
Only two local runners will be competing on Friday, and both are sophomores who will compete as individuals. Avalon’s Leonardo Perico will be running in the boys’ Division 5 prelims, and St. Anthony’s Tatiana Fernandez is running in Division 5 on the girls’ side. Those races are scheduled to start at 1 p.m. and 1:30 p.m., respectively.
Saturday is when the action really picks up with the Moore League schools and runners hitting the course.
The Wilson boys’ team will be the first local squad to compete on Saturday, running in the second heat for Division 1 at 9:30 a.m. Lakewood and Moore League champion Long Beach Poly are both in Heat 3, starting at 9:42. Millikan, led by two-time defending Moore League individual champion Jason Parra, will run in Heat 4 at 9:54.
In the girls’ prelims, the Moore League runners get going at 10:36 a.m. with the Wilson team joined by Lakewood’s Delilah Chavez in Heat 2. The next heat will feature the Millikan girls’ team, plus Lakewood’s Bailee Carpenter for a 10:48 start. Finally, league champion Camille Lindsay and the Poly girls’ team will wrap up the day running in the final Division 1 prelim heat at 11 a.m.
The top four teams in each Division 1 heat will earn qualification into the CIF-SS finals, held next Saturday, Nov. 20 at Mt. SAC. Individual runners can qualify by finishing in the top 6 of their heat. Since the Division 5 girls only have three heats, Fernandez needs to post a top 8 finish in order to qualify for the finals.
Live results from the CIF-SS prelims will be provided through Finished Results.
