Sept. 15, 2008

San Diego, Calif. - Sophomore Grace Gonzales led Cal State Fullerton's women's cross country team to a tenth-place showing in her season's debut while the men's team struggled with illness in the Aztec Invitational Saturday at Balboa Park.

Gonzales finished fifth individually with a time of 17:50. Teammate Carolyn Ellis remained sidelined with a minor hip injury and Gonzales was followed by teammates Meredith Robie (18:56) in 47th place, Yomaira Hernandez 19:03) in 57th, Erin Griffith (19:05) in 58th and Andrea Aguilar (19:23) in 72nd.

The men finished 15th among 17 teams led by Brent Handa at 26:08 in 39th place. He was followed by Jeff Mackay (26:40) in 65th, Eddie Perez 27:08) in 85th, Kevin Medema (27:14) in 91st and Joey Divizia (27:25) in 95th.

"I was real pleased with the women's effort," said Head Coach John Elders. "Carolyn (Ellis) still has a hip flexor and we didn't want to risk racing her. We showed a lot of improvement from two weeks ago and much potential.

"Grace ran a very fast race for that course.

"To give you an idea, we ran this race two years ago and our best time was 19:10 and today we had four runners without Carolyn better that time.

"The men had a tough day. Divizia was sick and gave it a go but just couldn't keep up. And Mackay was sick all last week and showed the effects. Kevin ran his best race and Eddie improved from last week.

"I'm optimistic we can put together a much better performance."

The Titans are idle until the men run at Stanford on Sept. 27 while the rest of the team is at the UC Riverside Invitational the same day.

Women's Results

Men's Results