BY NATE KOTISSO | STAFF WRITER
WESLACO — Even in a sport in which speed is the name of the game, progress isn’t quite so fast.
Weslaco High runner Destinee Longoria had to experience this for herself. She made the Panthers’ varsity cross country team as a freshman in 2017, but she took her lumps.
“I went straight into it, and I didn’t know what to expect,” Longoria said. “I don’t think I’ve grown that much from then to now. I still have a lot more to go. I need to improve on my starts and my finishes. I feel like I need to go a little bit more.”
Longoria’s first three races last year were all over the place. She finished 11th at the Edinburg High Invitational’s 5,000-meter race, followed by 8th- and 46th-place finishes at her next two competitions. Then, she turned on the light switch.
Longoria won the 2017 Edcouch-Elsa Track Club Invitational and followed that victory with back-to-back second-place finishes, including a new personal record in the 5,000: 19 minutes, 31.9 seconds.
“From the practices over the summer and doing hard workouts with myself and my team, that’s how I’ve improved,” Longoria said. “We’re all trying to hit the times that our coach wants us to hit.”
“I know she was a freshman last year, but she came in and took over,” Weslaco High coach Pablo Almaguer said. “You don’t get too many freshmen that come in and start competing well. She wasn’t dominant, but she ended the year a top-five runner. She’s matured a lot more this year and has worked real hard. She leads by example and makes the whole team around her better.”
In three races as a sophomore, Longoria has one outright victory and two other top-four placements.
“I ran in middle school, but I wasn’t very good,” Longoria said. “I actually thought I would make the JV team last year. Now, I’m here, and I have to remind myself and the team why we do this. We have a district championship on our minds. We can’t think negatively. We can’t give up. Since I was a freshman, I didn’t say much. When I came back this year, coach A (Almaguer) told me that we all need to be leaders on the team.”
Longoria isn’t the only bright spot on the Panthers squad. Seniors like Lisamarie Sanchez and Aaliyah Garza have helped carry the load in each of Weslaco High’s three meets. The Panthers won the 2018 YellowJacket Invitational as well as the Edinburg High Invitational. Weslaco High earned second as a group at the RGV Classic on Sept. 1.
“Our experienced girls are great leaders,” Almaguer said. “When the freshmen come in, those girls make the younger ones feel welcome and comfortable with the team. We try to stress that year in and year out. We work on a lot of character building with them, which I think sets the tone with how our team operates. Having a winning tradition helps, as well. The kids come in, and they know what is expected of them. The ones that stick it out are the ones that develop into the character of athlete that you want on your team.”
The Weslaco High girls did not compete in a meet over the weekend, but it did not feel that way to Longoria.
“We have harder practices on weeks when we don’t race,” Longoria said. “We tack on a little bit more to our workouts. We use Saturday like we are competing in a meet.”
“We’ve run three good meets, and it gets to a point where, as a coach, you have to make a decision for what’s best for your team,” Almaguer said. “We’re not competing against other schools, but we didn’t take a break. We got a tough workout in. We were productive and got something out of it.
“In time, I think it’s going to be refreshing for the girls’ mind to not have to feel stress on a Saturday like this. That’s going to set us up for the big meets coming up. We’ll be in Brownsville, Corpus (Christi) and McNeil right after that. We still have to figure out if we want to run in Harlingen the week before districts, then we’ll have districts, and then regionals. We have to take care of our team, and I think this is a good time to take a bit of a step back.”