by Jalen Manson and Jake Newman

The 2018 St. John Bosco High School Cross-Country team led by Head Coach Tim McIntosh has already participated in two meets to being their season, performing well in both.

In the first meet on September 1st, the team ran in the Jeff Nelson: High School Invitational at Griffith Park. The team ran hard and earned a hard-fought 4th place finish overall.

“It was a very tough course there at Griffith Park,” said senior team captain Zeke Delgado.

After the meet, the team dedicated a period strictly to training and getting better. Many runners had been dealing with illnesses leading up to the meet, so getting them back to 100 percent was the team’s first priority.

In their second meet of the season, the team participated in the Cool Breeze: High School Invitational, which is held at Brookside Country Club. This was a well-known meet, and had a large field of 35 teams competing.

“There was a lot of PR’s (personal records) set and we finished with a team time of 1:19:34. It was good to see that we finished with a 5 man gap of 30 seconds. This means that everyone finished very close to each other and that we really ran as team,” said Delgado.

Zeke Delgado held it down as team captain and sported a 15:41 time, coming in 21st place. The second one to finish was junior Daniel Covarrubias with a 15:42 time, and he was followed by sophomore JT McCoy, who came in with a time of 15:48.

League play starts Thursday with a huge matchup against other Trinity League powerhouses such as Mater Dei, Orange Lutheran, JSerra, Servite and Santa Margarita. The Braves will look to defend their league title from last year and continue to work on starting a new “streak” within the program.