Lady Apaches headed to state

CORPUS CHRISTI — The Gonzales Lady Apaches cross-country team are state bound, achieving a goal they’ve set all season to get to the state meet, by taking third place at the Region IV-4A meet Monday afternoon. Meanwhile, the Waelder boys’ placed 15th in the Region IV-1A race.
The team totaled 123 points, behind Bandera who finished first with 43 points and Boerne who finished second with 118 points. Bandera won the Class 4A state title the past three years.
“We knew there were about eight solid teams out of 24 that were going to be pretty legit,” Gonzales Head Coach Cully Doyle said. “We knew they were going to be the real deal. We figured we can be one of them. We knew Bandera was going to be good. They deserve to be confident, they’re the defending state champs for a reason. With that said we thought we can run with them. They ran better than everybody even expected, they deserved what they got. We felt like we could have got second. We pulled off third, we got third to Boerne who we’ve already beat.”
Leading the way for the Lady Apaches was Veronica Moreno who was timed at 12:41. Romy Cantu was right behind at 12:43 followed by Haley Garza at 12:46. Stephanie Reyna finished at 13:07, Shelby Davis at 13:22, Krystalynn Buesing at 13:32 and Maura Garcia at 13:38.
“The good thing is — and I want to be humble about this — but the good thing is we didn’t run our best. And we still got out. That’s big for us,” Doyle noted. “I felt like there’s some things that didn’t go our way in the middle of the race. It turned out to be a different race than I expected. Our girls stepped up.”
The head coach also mentioned how his top girl and seventh girl were merely 57 seconds apart.
“We’ve been talking about that all year long,” he said. “We won the pre-regional meet four weeks ago and were a 1:13 apart from each other, and we were like ‘we can do this.’ Then we go to the district meet and we win it pretty handedly against some good teams and we were 58 seconds apart. Then we closed the gap even more and we didn’t even run our best. We took a lot of positives out of that meet. The girls were excited being third place. Being third place and being on the podium in the regional meet is a huge thing in Region IV-4A.”

Gonzales’ Antonio Hernandez misses state qualification

Meanwhile, Antonio Hernandez was Gonzales’ lone boy representative in the regional race. The sophomore struggled in the final third of the race, failing to reach the top 10 as he finished the five-kilometer race at 148th, timed at 20:37.5.
“We had to gamble,” Doyle explained. “He didn’t have a team to come with, it was him. And if he didn’t finish in the top 10 he’s not going to state. So, it was kind of like, this is what you have to do, he was going to have to run out of his comfort zone.”
Hernandez tried running with the Progreso and Fredericksburg teams, who took first and third, respectively.
“[Those] boys were not messing around,” Doyle said. “They got after it. But Antonio went with him. That was our plan.”
Hernandez finished the first mile in 4:40, and stayed around 15th through the second mile, but was unable to keep pace.
“The last mile he just couldn’t hang on,” Doyle explained. “Unfortunately his body kind of shut down. He went from really fast to a jog. I hate to say that. I love that kid.”
“What’s sad is, there’s two boys that he’s already beat this year that are going to state,” he continued. “It was just a different race, different atmosphere. No excuse, I’m not going to make excuses for him. The kid ran great. It’s just — it’s not a best of seven games. You don’t get a bad game and get to play tomorrow night. It’s one shot. That’s the hard part. You’re training for one day, for that day. If you don’t get it, it’s 12 months later. “
Doyle was hopeful, especially with Hernandez being just a sophomore. With some young runners coming up through the ranks, the Apache boys’ team has a bright future ahead of them.

Waelder places 15th at meet

The Apaches weren’t the only team to make it to the Region IV meet. The Waelder Wildcats made it to the Region IV-1A race after advancing from their district meet. The boys’ were able to take 15th as a team, missing out on the state qualification.
John Aguilar led the team as he finished with a time of 19:25. Following him were Jayvion Thompson at 21:17, Alexander Mendoza at 23:43, Charles Smith-Haines at 24:18 and Jacovan Fields at 24:45.