For decades, up until 2018, there were two nearly identical cross country invites held at Rohr Park in Chula Vista in early September. The Otay Ranch head coach, Ian Cumming, hosted the Mustang Invite, and the Sweetwater coach, Tim Latham, hosted the South Bay Invite. Schools rarely attended both. Both coaches are now retired. The two events merged into the Ian Cumming / Tim Latham invite, which Otay Ranch now hosts. The event is large enough for two random divisions, the Mustang division and the Red Devil (Sweetwaters’ mascot) division. Two divisions are needed because otherwise there would be over 50 teams for each race.

This year’s event drew nearly 1800 runners from over 50 teams. Coronado ran in the Red Devil division. Because of the heat wave, the longer races and all others were two miles long. Each race had entries from around 28 schools.

Our top two boys’ performances came from Nathan Ayan, who placed 8th in the boys varsity race with a time of 10:52, and Jack Letcher, who ran 11:01 for 13th place. This was our only race with a full 7-runner team. Vincent Russo was our next finisher at 11:26, followed by Andrew Buck, Xavier Marsh, Nicholas Wosje, and Tyler Horton. Teamwise, we placed seventh behind larger schools, most of which were over twice our size. There were only 16 points difference betwee... Click here to read full article

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