Despite
some strong individual efforts at this year's Don Bosco Tech invitational
the Braves did not have an impressive team showing. The Braves
lack of experienced depth, sub-par performances and absent runners
made for a group that was not close to last years team who had
a time gap of only 15 seconds.
In the end though "team" wasn't the
major theme for the day as the invitational was run as grade
level races and not a team competition.
Seniors Kevin Urak and Matthew Pruter led the
way for their squad as they posted the two fastest times for
their team. Urak placed 6th in the senior race and ran a gutsy
race as he led for much of the 3-mile course. His time of 15:38
is second best in school history on the Bosco Tech course and
is a 22 second improvement from his 2003 mark. Pruter was also
much improved this time around as he finished with a time of
16:14 to achieve a 36 second improvement over last year.
Although not the team improvement the coaches
were hoping for they were very pleased with the overall performances
from more then a hand full of the runners. Many runners, on all
grade levels, improved more than a minute from their times last
year, in some cases over two minutes.
This year's sophomore group was a great example
of that as Victor Bonilla led the way. His time of 16:59 is a
2 minute 21 second improvement over last year. Sophomores Tim
Barreto, Raymond Cruces, and Nick Rojes also had dramatic improvements
with Rojes improving over 4 minutes!
Leading the way for the freshman team were David
Boese (18:43) and Brett McCoy (19:01) running tough in their
first high school races.
