La Mirada High School

Week Two: La Habra Dual Meet
Girls: Week two of the 2006 season was "test-time" for the Lady Matadores. With key individuals nursing aches, pains, and illnesses, the goal for this week was to test and evaluate their progress. The strategy? Pack running in pre-defined groups. To help the girls succeed, they were assigned "racing buddies" and instructed to stay together the entire race. Each pack came through EXACTLY as expected as La Mirada cruised to a 17 - 46 victory on the hills, mud, and grass of Regional Park.

For Krystal Gomez, Lillian Mignella, Caitlin Winn and Karina Gonzalez, the results were better than expected. Both Karina and Caitlin competed in their first race of the season on the difficult 3.05 mile course. Significantly, Karina, who earned herself a varsity uniform, ran the entire course with Lauren McIntyre as they both completed the course faster than the top Lady Mat at the pre-season team time trial. Caitlin broke ahead in the last mile and is now the #2 JV girl. Krystal completed the course over a minute faster than the time trial and Lillian finished the race with minimal pain. Up front, the trio of Melissa Byrd, Stephanie Felix, and Sarah Jeon finished #1, #2,& #3 as they completed the course 10 seconds ahead of La Habra's Hope Spahn (who ran the 2006 Woodbridge Invitational in a time of 20:00).

BOYS: Disappointed by their times last week, the goal for the boys was simple: run faster this week! For the most part, their times on the La Mirada course were comparable to or better than their times last week. Led by Andrew Bueno, the trio of Andrew, Dennis Ly, and Andrew Garza opened with a strong first mile before they were gradually overtaken by La Habra's strong front three. In the end, the Matadores were on the short end of a 37 - 19 score.