The last two weeks have been overwhelmingly competitive and successful for both the girls and boys cross country team at ILS.

On Friday October 31st, the boys and girls attended the District Championship race at St. Thomas University. Eight girls were selected for this race along with three of the boys. The girls cross county team did an amazing job at their district 15-2A meet. The team placed second in the district and got to hoist the runner-up trophy after the meet.

The district race was overall successful for both the boys and the girls teams. Both groups were able to advance to regionals. The boys all put in their max effort and qualified as an individual for regionals.

Regionals took place at South County Regional park following the week after districts.

The regional race was very successful for the team, with many of the runners out performing their personal records. Senior Victoria Morrera ran with a season-best time of 21:28 and placed 24th overall in a competitive grouping.

Senior Isabella Juara ran a personal best (22:42) and sophomore Alessia Quiros finished in a season-best time of 23:06. Freshman Mariam Osman (24:01) and sophomore Anna Zorgniotti (26.08) also ran very well.

In the boys division, senior Max Betancourt ran a personal best of 21:14. Coach Eddie Cerdeiras praised the efforts of the ILS runners, especially their hard work and dedication. Only a limited amount of athletes advanced to regionals, so to have such a large group speaks to Coach Eddie’s efforts as well. The state finals were pared down because of COVID-19, which probably prevented the ILS runners from continuing.

“Congratulations to the cross country team and head coach Eddie Cerdeiras for an excellent year,” said ILS Athletic Director Nick Fernandez.

Although the team didn’t qualify for states the team was able to learn and grow from this experience.

“We improved together as a team and put all of our hard work and dedication for our last race. With covid only a limited amount of athletes advanced to regionals and luckily we were on, advancing to states was a lot harder especially because of limited spaces but we gave it our best run and ended our season with great success,” said senior Victoria Morrera.

Overall this years cross country season was a great success for the team.

“The team already has improved immensely since the previous years, but there’s always room for more which as captain i feel would be the mental aspect of a race, this year we had various of times for each athlete no many consistent times because the team members would get into there own head and i think if we learned to over come that mentally we would all be more at ease with a race prior,” said Morrera.

This was the final year for four of the seniors: Bentancourt, Noah Coronado, Isabella Juara and Morrera, who was also the team captain. The cross country team will miss these runners and wish them the best in college.