Triton Invitational Results

By Erik Carr
BroncoAthletics.com

LA JOLLA, Calif. - As the sun climbed higher and the temperature grew hotter in the hours before noon on Saturday, the same could be said about sophomore Ryan Carrell's respective national ranking and string of performances during the 2011 season.

With a time of 32 minutes, 44.9 seconds, the Westminster native and top runner of the Cal Poly Pomona men's cross-country team finished first in the men's 10-kilometer race.

"I'm not surprised at him winning the event at all," said head coach Troy Johnson. "I know in the last finish of any race, if he's in it, [with] his foot speed, he can win any race. So, I think we're just going to build off of that, get ready for conference and go forward from that."

Of races with more than 50 runners, Carrell's victory marks the first time a CPP runner has won a meet since Geraldo Rabelo took first at the Redlands Invitational on Sept. 23, 2006.

In addition, Carrell's mark is a career-best for 10,000 meters. He placed 11th at the meet in 2010.

"It's cool [to win the men's race]," Carrell said. "It's cool because I didn't do so good last year, so it's nice to come here and improve and come out with a win."

Carrell also said he expects to place among the top three runners in his next race.

Johnson was very pleased with the performance of the men's team and the work assistant coach Tony Reyes has put in with the freshmen runners this season.

"We have a young group on the men's side," Johnson said. "This is the first 10-k[m] for a lot of them. They handled it well; they competed. Ryan, having experience on this course and a little rest under his belt not racing last week, was fresh and ready to roll this week and showed some of his attributes today."

Helping secure the a third-place team finish was freshman Brandon Haugen in 11th, who ran his race in 33:55.7, to give the Broncos their second-best mark for the race.

Freshmen runners William Tsai (34:29.5), Austin Miller (34:54.5) and Andres Zavala (35:10.7) finished in 18th, 23rd and 27th, respectively, to give the Broncos a fairly-tight grouping.

The final stretch of the 2011 season begins next week as CPP's top seven runners compete at the CCAA Cross-Country Championships on Oct. 22 in Santa Rosa. The race will begin at 9 a.m.