Cuesta eyes top-10 finish at the state cross country meet
The Cuesta College men’s cross country team heads to the CCCAA State Cross Country Championships at Woodward Park in Fresno today for the seventh consecutive season and is poised to finish in the top 10 for the first time in program history.
The Cougars are led by Cal Poly transfer Connor Fisher along with local high school graduate Alex Hascall (Nipomo), Roberto Bazan (Santa Ynez), Nick Landy (Templeton) and Daniel Van Buerden (Morro Bay).
The Cougars started the season slow with a sixth-place finish at the Tour de Cuesta as head coach Brian Locher held Fisher out of the race with tendonitis. Hascall was the top performer, finishing 10th over the 4-mile course in 22 minutes, 34.44 seconds.
One week later at the SoCal Preview, Locher had the team run as a pack through the first two miles before Bazan led the Cougars to an eighth-place finish. Bazan finished 28th at 20:59, followed by Hascall at 21:12 in 35th place and Fisher at 21:15 in 39th.
Fisher’s breakout performance came two weeks later at the Western State Conference Preview meet where he finished fourth and established himself as a conference and state contender. He followed up his fourth-place performance with a win at the Santa Barbara Beach Invitational in the final race of the regular season. Fisher’s success was mirrored by Cuesta as he paced the Cougars to a third-place finish at the WSC Preview and a second-place finish at Santa Barbara.
Fisher began his historic postseason run by winning the Western State Conference Championships in Ventura by more than 30 seconds and running the fourth-best time in course history as the Cougars finished second. Locher accredited the second-place performance to the team’s depth saying, “the men’s ability to run tough courses was paramount.”
The team improved all around in comparison to their performances at the WSC Preview as Hascall moved up 17 spots to sixth place, Bazan moved up 21 spots to seventh, and Landy improved by more than 100 spots to finish 11th.
Fisher became Cuesta’s first individual champion in at least 10 years and the 42-point team performance is the lowest score in school history at the conference meet. Fisher continued his torrid postseason as he was the runner-up at the SoCal Championships finishing at 20:05, two seconds behind winner Lucio Ramirez of Orange Coast and improving by over a minute from his performance at the SoCal Preview.
Cuesta finished fourth as Bazan and Hascall finished 26th and 27, respectively, with identical times of 20:54.
Their performances at the conference meet and the SoCal Championships have the Cougars ranked between fifth and seventh heading into the state championships as they are “hoping to finish within the top 3,” Locher said. “The guys are fresh and prepared.”
This story was originally published November 22, 2014 at 1:33 AM with the headline "Cuesta eyes top-10 finish at the state cross country meet."