UCLA men’s, women’s teams ready for finals

  NICOLE MILLER/Daily Bruin Sophomore runner
Melissa McBain finished seventh overall in
Friday’s Fullerton Invitational. Cross Country
UCLA 24 Concordia 44 UC Irvine B team 60

By Dylan Hernandez
Daily Bruin Senior Staff

For the men’s and women’s cross country teams, the
Fullerton Invitational Friday served as an adequate tune-up for
next week’s Pac-10 championships.

Both teams, which have benefited from consistent frontrunning
all season, got strong races from their back-of-the-pack runners,
giving them the depth they will need at the conference finals next
Saturday, October 28th.

“Our team has come together,” said senior Gina
Donnelly, who finished fifth on the Bruin women’s squad and
ninth overall. “We’re ready to step up.”

The UCLA women, who easily won the meet with a score of 24
points, stayed together behind the leaders through the first two
miles of their 5-kilometer race.

With a little more than a mile remaining, seniors Tina Bowen and
Katie Nuanes took off to the front. They cruised the rest of the
race and came in together at 17:53.3.

The Bruins’ remaining three scorers came bunched together,
as sophomores Melissa McBain (18:08.6) and Julia Barbour (18:10.6)
and Donnelly (18:17.7) finished seventh, eighth and ninth,
respectively.

Junior Alynda Franco, racing for the first time this year, was
18th with a time of 18:52.3. Freshmen Tiffany Burgess (21st,
19:07.0) and Jessica Marr (24th, 19:16.5) also cracked the top
25.

“This was supposed to be a mid-level workout,” said
Bowen. “It’s nice when you can run a mid-level workout
that well.”

Bowen, the team captain, said that with sophomore Kelly Grimes
and freshman Valerie Flores, who were resting but returning to the
lineup next week, she expects the team to be strong in all seven of
its spots.

On the men’s side, junior Justin Patananan made himself
the top candidate to fill in the fifth slot for the Bruins at the
Pac-10s.

With five of the top seven men resting to recover from last
week’s Wolverine Interregional, Patananan was the top
collegiate finisher in his race, losing only to Ramon Serratos,
racing for Puma.

Patananan was among the leaders through the early going, and two
and a half miles into the race, he and Serratos pulled away.

Although Serratos would make his race-winning move a half mile
later to gap Patananan, the UCLA junior held off the rest of the
field and completed the 8k in 24:55.5. Serratos finished in
24:34.0.

Senior Andrew Wulf, who started the race more conservatively,
moved up quickly over the latter part of the contest to cross the
line at 25:13.4 for fourth place.

“It really helps build our confidence,” said senior
captain Scott Abbott, who was among the runners who rested but
nonetheless made the trip to Fullerton.

“Our fifth spot has been really soft and it helps to have
a guy in that position who’s running at a high
level.”

Other finishers for the Bruin men, who finished second as a team
behind USC, were sophomore Phillip Young (19th, 26:07.4), junior
Martin Brix (20th, 26:08.3) and senior Jonathan Lee (32nd,
27:21.8).