The Lyford Bulldogs competed in the District 31-3A cross country meet Wednesday in Harlingen and had one athlete qualify for the Region IV-3A meet.
Nancy Correa earned a 10th-place finish in the varsity girls race to clinch a spot in the regional meet. The Class 3A girls are scheduled to run at 10:50 a.m. on Oct. 25 at Dugan Stadium at Texas A&M University-Corpus Christi.
“It was super awesome that we got somebody to qualify for regionals,” Lyford coach Iannelli Ledesma said. “The competition that we have, there’s 10 teams including ourselves in the district, so we knew it was going to be a tough one today. These kids work super hard, so it was pretty exciting to get a representative to head out to Corpus in a few weeks. … We’re looking forward to regionals and trying to put ourselves back on the map. We’re hungry for more.”
The top three teams and top 10 overall individuals from each district meet qualify for the regional meet. Pharr IDEA swept the 31-3A meet, clinching the team district championships in both the girls and boys divisions. North Mission IDEA and Weslaco IDEA Pike were second and third, respectively, in the girls team standings. In the boys standings, Vanguard Rembrandt finished second and Weslaco IDEA Pike was third.
Lyford’s girls team finished seventh with 140 points. Aleyna Frias (13th), Savannah Chavez (38th), Iliana Garza (39th) and Lauren Silva (53rd) competed along with Correa for the Lady Bulldogs. Richard Herrera (34th), Julian Betancourt (49th), Rick De Luna (50th) and Lorenzo Cantu (51st) represented Lyford in the boys race.
“I think we fared pretty well. It was unfortunate that we couldn’t qualify as a team, but we’re super proud of all our kids, boys and girls,” Ledesma said. “It’s a tough sport to begin with, so I give a lot of credit to these kids for getting through the COVID year and then coming out and competing with the numbers that we have in our district. It’s awesome to see how resilient these kids are.”
The district certification deadline for cross country is Oct. 16. Regional meets will take place Oct. 25-26. At the regional meet, the top four teams and top 10 individuals not on a qualifying team in each class will advance to the state meet scheduled for Nov. 5-6 at Old Settler’s Park in Round Rock.
