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Cross Country - OCC women capture 12th straight OEC title at SoCal Meet
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Sunday, November 04, 2007
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  WALNUT -- For the 12th year in a row, the Orange Coast College women's cross country team captured an Orange Empire Conference championship at the Southern California Community College Championships on Saturday at Mt. San Antonio College.
With all Southern California schools participating following last weeks wildfires, the results were also broken down by conferences, allowing the Pirates to successfully defend their title.
Led by a first-place performance from freshman Crystal Reed (pictured left), the Pirates posted a 40-point win over Fullerton, 25-65. Riverside placed third with 75 and Saddleback (100) finished fourth among OEC teams.
Overall, the Pirates finished second to Glendale 66-85 as the 33-team event basically turned into a dual meet between the top two teams in the state. Southwestern finished a distant third place with 194 points.
"It's going to be a great competition at state, that's for sure," head coach Marco Ochoa said. "Us and Glendale are both evenly matched -- it's going to come down to those last few spots to determine who the winner is."
Reed was never threatened in the race and posted a winning time of 17 minutes, 19.8 seconds on the 5K course, nearly 40 seconds ahead of runner-up Vivien Wadeck of Glendale (17:59.2).
Four of the top 20 runners in the event wore the orange and blue of the Pirates including Cassie Mitchell (seventh, 18:50.2), Ariana Espinoza (16th, 19:28.4), Senayt Asrat (20th, 19:35.5).
Other OCC times include Joanna Abarca (43rd, 20:14.9), Jillian Lopez (60th, 20:52.6) and Claire Fleming (74th, 21:18.0).
The OCC men finished second among OEC teams and eighth overall with 249 points.
The Pirates were led by sophomore standout Brandon Babiracki (pictured above, right), who won the OEC individual title with a four-mile time of 21:09.8, sixth-best among all Southern California runners.
Other top OCC times include Preston Switzer (22:15.7), Jorge Torres (22:31.2), Chris Ponce (22:58.8), Sean Connor (23:04.1), Cooper Meacham (23:08.0) and Nathaniel Mouzis (23:38.9).
The State Championships will be held at Fresno's Woodward Park on Saturday, beginning at 10 a.m. for the women and 11 a.m. for the men.
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