RIVERSIDE, Calif. - The Fresno Pacific cross country teams battled at the UCR Cross Country Invitational on Saturday morning. The women's team competed in the open division and finished first as a team with Alyana Cortez-Chavez leading the Sunbirds. Earlier that morning, the men's team placed 18th in the 8K race against several Division I teams.
 
"We had a great day at the UCR XC Invite," said head coach Landon Miller. "The girls ran a great race and moved up well the last kilometer of the race to go from 3rd place to win the race as a team. We had 4 cross country personal bests for the ladies in the 5k. The guys ran really well in a super-fast invite section with quite a few DI teams in the race. Both teams ran composed races and fought well for each other to move up throughout the races!"

On the women's side, Aly Chavez captured a third-place finish with a time of 17:52. She was the first Sunbird to cross the finish line in the Open division, and was soon followed by, Julissa Avila in eighth (18:00), Mattie Whipple in 14^th (18:15), and Gaby Ramirez in 25^th (18:27). With Julia Martinez (18:36), Emily Flores (19:00) and Sienna Negrete (19:32) closing out for the day, the Lady 'Birds sealed the first place victory with 64 points overall.

The men competed in a tough, fast-paced invite section among several Division I schools. Overall, the men's team placed eighth in the 8K race with 390 points in total. Evan Torres and Paul Quintanilla both had huge personal bests, taking over 30 seconds off their previous 8k bests. Torres crossed the line first for FPU and was 45^th overall, hitting a time of 24.38. Rodney Chemalmal (24:59), Paul Quintanilla (25:00), and Luke Sanders (25:19) stayed within the 25-minute mark.

NEXT UP: Cross Country heads to the Bronco-Invitational on October 18th held in Santa Clara.

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