Pirates perform well; take second overall at OEC Preview Meet
COSTA MESA -- The Orange Coast College women's track and field team saw firsthand where they stand among the rest of their conference foes on Friday and finished second overall at the Orange Empire Conference Preview Meet on Friday at OCC.
The Pirates gave OEC frontrunner, Riverside, a run for their money and finished just 30 points behind the Tigers with 230 points. Saddleback was a distant third with 51 points, followed by Fullerton (50), Golden West (19) and Santa Ana (7).
Sophomore thrower standout Abigail Gavrilovic earned first-place marks in all three of her events. She took first overall in the hammer throw with a mark of 160-feet, 7-inches, nearly 23 FEET farther than RCC runner-up, Esra Mor (137-4). In the discus, Gavrilovic was over 13 feet ahead of the field with a winning throw of 139-7 and in the shot put, she earned the gold with a throw of 39-6 3/4.
While Gavrilovic had the biggest margins of victory, it couldn't get any closer for a first-place performance than in the women's 4x100-meter relay, where the OCC foursome of Alyssa Bowman, Jasmin Trujillo, Nikki Witana and Chloe Guerena crossed the finish line with a first-place time of 49.21 ... just .01 ahead of RCC's squad, who finished at 49.22.
In the 1,500, it was a far less stressful result for sophomore Liberty Miller, who cleared the field by over 7 seconds and won her race with a time of 4:44.51.
Trujillo followed up her relay win with an individual win in the 800, crossing the finish line first with a time of 2:24.02, 5 seconds ahead of runner-up Lowyn Pereyda of Golden West (2:29.44).
In the 200, Guerena showed off her speed and edged RCC's Kiarah Rivers at the tape with a first-place time of 26.23 seconds.
Kiarah Palacio went to work in the pole vault and came out with the top jump of the day, clearing 10-1 3/4.
It was a 1-2 finish in the javelin throw for the Pirates with Kendall Crisman taking first overall with a throw of 83-3, with OCC teammate Katrina Loether (79-2) taking the silver.
Other top-3 performances for the Pirates include Guerena in the 100 (2nd, 12.86), Ana Chupinsky in the 400 hurdles (2nd, 1:08.74), OCC's 4x400 relay (2nd, 4:10.91), Tala Dawood in the 400 hurdles (3rd, 1:13.87), Trujillo in the 200 (3rd, 26.71), Nikki Osuna in the 100 hurdles (3rd, 17.62), Sara Chupinsky in the long jump (3rd, 15-11 1/4), triple jump (3rd, 33-8) and high jump (3rd, 4-7) and Loether in the hammer throw (3rd, 119-4.)
The Pirates will return to action on Saturday up at the UC Santa Barbara Invitational, beginning at 9 a.m.
