T.J. GARCIA | SPECIAL TO THE MONITOR
MSSION — Rio Grande City cross-country junior Brandon Gracia really knows how to run.
The problem was, up until last year, no one besides him knew it. Gracia did not compete in track and wasn’t on the cross-country team, either. Then, last year, cross country coach Joe Ramirez saw him blaze through a mile-run in PE class.
“Then I said ‘Son, can you do it again?’” Ramirez said. “He did it again. Didn’t lose pace. Even got faster, and then I said ‘Son, you have to do distance running for me.’”
Good thing Gracia did, because Saturday morning at the Sharyland Pioneer Cross Country Invitational, he dominated the boys’ elite division. The junior finished with a personal-best 15:29 in the 5K (3.1 miles) race, 35 seconds ahead of the second-place finisher. It wasn’t even close for Gracia, whose time is ranked among the state’s bests, Ramirez said.
While Gracia claimed the individual title, Eagle Pass took the boys’ team title with a meet-best 72 points and three top-10 finishers. La Joya Palmview placed second with 146 points and one top-three finisher (senior Victor Bocanegra, second place at 16:12) and Mission High landed third with 150 points.
On the girls’ side, La Joya Palmview grabbed the top team trophy with 41 points and four runners in the top dozen places, including overall champion Brianna Robles. Edinburg High came in second with a strong 71 points and three runners among the top 11 finishers. Host Pioneer came in third with 99 points.
There were about two dozen schools competing. Most squads were from the Rio Grande Valley, but Laredo United, Eagle Pass and Corpus Christi King also brought teams from outside the region. None, however, mustered a runner better than Gracia.
Gracia started the race — run on a generally flat course in and around Pioneer’s campus — near the top of the heap and stayed there until about halfway through when he began to break away.
“Everyone was going together like for the first mile, and once you hit the mile you gotta go, so of course I picked up the pace,” Gracia said. “Some people stuck around for a mile and a half, but coaches were encouraging me to pick it up so I could drop them, and that’s what I did.”
Gracia said he feels much better than last year with a year of experience under his belt. He wants to improve on last year’s fifth-place finish at district. The junior also placed ninth at regionals and 61st at the Class 5A state meet.
Palmview’s Robles, like Gracia, dominated the field. The junior’s 18:57 clocking was nearly a minute better than the next fastest runner. Notably, Edinburg North star runner Beth Ramos, who paced last week’s cross country meet with a scorching 18:51, did not run Pioneer’s meet. Still, Robles ran hard in this early-season race.
“I was nervous, but this is something I’ve done before so I tried my best and kept pushing,” said Robles, who got out to a really fast start. “I focused on my breathing and my arms.”
PSJA High’s Anna Sanchez, who finished second last week in Edinburg, grabbed third Saturday behind Robles and a Laredo runner with a 19:51. That was nearly a minute better than last week.