Hartnell College Cross Country Belongs Among ‘Giants’

Hartnell College Athletics’ record of excellence in men’s and women’s cross country attained new heights on Saturday, Nov. 20 at the 2021 California Community College Athletic Association (CCCAA) State Championship in Fresno. The men’s third-place team score – led by Isaac Gensel’s second-place individual finish – gave them their first state trophy, eclipsing a program-best fourth place in 1992. The women matched their program-best team mark of second place, also achieved in 2015 and 2018, and placed four runners in the top 30. The combined showing was the Panthers’ finest ever, before a large and electric crowd that included friends, family and many Hartnell cross country alumni. Head Coach Chris Zepeda, who joined Hartnell in 2006 and became head coach for cross country and track and field in 2018, said the accomplishment is magnified by the size of the colleges they faced. Mt. San Antonio College (Mt. SAC), which won the state women’s race and placed second in the men’s, is more than twice the size of Hartnell, as is San Diego Mesa College, which won the men’s title. Riverside, which placed right behind Hartnell in both races, is nearly as large. Hartnell, ranked second in the state for both men and women’s programs before the championship, has the second-smallest enrollment of any school to place in the top three in state cross country over the past 30 years, Zepeda said. “I’ve always told our kids, ‘We’re up against giants,’ so this is pretty historic,” he said. “That’s something they wanted to create – history. For a lot of them, this was their first state championship for community college, and it helps us set the tone going forward for the future. They raised the bar for the program and the athletes who will remain and follow.” For Hartnell runners who competed at state in 2019, when the women’s team placed fourth and the men finished a disappointing seventh, this year’s championship at Woodward Park course was an opportunity to rewrite that outcome and savor strong performances after the pandemic wiped out the 2020 season. Zepeda said both squads’ attitude was, “If we’re going to do this, we want to do something great. We’ve got all these great kids from the local area. We weren’t going to settle for walking away without a trophy.” ‘It was such a fun race’ Gensel, a 2019 graduate of Monterey High School, covered four hilly miles in 20 minutes, 11 seconds, beating his 24th-place 2019 state championship time by 1:07. He was 19 seconds behind the race winner, Southern California champion Daniel Abdala of Mt. SAC, after going from ninth place to second within the final mile, thanks to what he called a “huge kick.” “I ran the whole race with a smile on my face,” Gensel said. “It was such a fun race. It’s been a great, memorable season. I’m just glad it ended the way it did.” He plans to complete a mission year with the Mormon Church after graduating from Hartnell this spring and hopes to continue his running career at a four-university after that. As a top-14 finisher, Gensel earned All-American honors. On Nov. 5, he won the Northern California Conference Championship (NorCal), leading the Hartnell men to a team victory as well. The Panther men’s second-fastest runner at state was freshman Esteban Deniz, from King City High School, who earned All-State honors by finishing 16th, with a time of 20:39. Less than a second behind him, in 19th place, was King City sophomore Daniel Correa, who also made All-State. The other three Hartnell men were sophomore Francisco Maciel (29th, 20:56), freshman Eli Ainsworth (31st, 20:60) and freshman Ricky Diaz III (36th, 21:05). Women’s leaders: Camacho and Lozano-Gomez Leading the Hartnell women were a pair of former North Salinas High teammates, freshman Sofia Camacho, and sophomore Valeria Lozano-Gomez, who placed eighth and ninth, respectively, with times of 18:48.1 and 18:50.1 over 3.1 miles. Both are All-American, and Lozano-Gomez became only the third Hartnell woman to twice achieve that distinction in cross country. Camacho earlier won at NorCal, with Lozano-Gomez in third, to seal the Panthers’ conference title. All-State honors went to Hartnell’s Andrea Villegas, a freshman from North Monterey County High School. She placed 20th with a time of 19:24. Hartnell’s other women runners at state were freshman Ashley Ochoa (28th, 19:40) and sophomore Jazmin Mora (41st, 20:01). Camacho noted that, like the men’s team, the Panther women aimed to finish in close succession for optimum scoring, a strategy that was hard to adhere to amid both races’ aggressive pace. “Since we had talked about it so often, we all just knew what we had to do,” she said. “I felt like that’s why we were successful for most of the season.” The women’s goal was to win it all and push past the second-place benchmark, Camacho said. Although that didn’t happen, she exceeded her personal goal of simply finishing in the top 14. After running long distance on the track team this spring, she will graduate from Hartnell with a degree in kinesiology and plans to continue her competitive runner at a four-year school. Zepeda cites culture of success Coach Zepeda said both teams came away from the state championship with a feeling of post-pandemic redemption, regaining Hartnell’s place among the state’s most elite community college cross country programs. He said Gensel’s “exponential improvement over his time at Hartnell kind of shows what we really focus on – that there really are unlimited possibilities at community college.” “You start surrounding yourself with other people that are very goal-oriented,” Zepeda said, “and suddenly it becomes a little more infectious, and you may want to run a little more or go to bed a little bit earlier – or you’re going to do a little bit better in your classes. And we hope that it becomes a group culture where everybody wants to be successful.”