Sophomore Chris Barrientos and senior John Carder finished the cross country course at Bishop Park within 0:01 of each other to highlight the annual Bryant instrasquad meet on Thursday.
Barrientos (47th) and Carder (23rd) were the top two finishers for the Hornets at the 2015 Class 7A State cross country championships. On Thursday, Barrientos led the field with a time of 10:48 but Carder, who was second at 10:49, led his White team to the victory with 137 points. Barrientos and the Blue team finished with 154 points and the Black team, led by third-place Eathan Devine (11:48), a senior, finished with 186 points.
The White team was also buoyed by the top junior high runner, Dylan White, who was 11th overall in a time of 12:44.
Rounding out the top 10 were Enrique Ramos of the Blue team at 11:53, Decatur Austin of the Black team at 12:22, Chris Morgan of the Black team at 12:28, Kaine Villareal-Hurst of the White team at 12:29, Andy Doonan of the Black team at 12:37, Erik Gonzalez of the White team at 12:39 and Colby Harvey of the Blue team at 11:53.
“Chris Barrientos and John Carder put on a great show up front,” said Hornets coach Steve Oury. “They have shown that they are among the best runners in this area.
“As we move forward we will work on trying to reduce the gap between those two and the rest of our pack,” he noted. “Eathan Devine and Enrique Ramos have been practicing well and had nice races. We need some other guys to step up and help them out. I think we have several who are capable of doing just that.”
The team will officially open the 2016 season at the Minuteman Invitational at Western Hills Park in Little Rock on Saturday, Sept. 10.
Here are the complete results from Thursday’s competition:
