Following disappointing Pac-12 performance last season, Wildcats show potential on Ag-Ops course, site of championship this fall; Cal Poly gets good tuneup for Big West final, with Fick and Mauri both producing strong improvements from last year
By Landon Negri for DyeStat
It might be ambitious to call Saturday’s 41st UC Riverside Invitational a preview meet for the Pacific-12 Conference or the Big West, both with conference championships scheduled for the Ag-Ops course in October.
But the University of Arizona women treated the event as such and it paid dividends while also serving notice the Wildcats might be a program to watch in 2022.
Arizona pulled a one-point upset Saturday of perennial Big West power Cal Poly, tallying 140 points to the Mustangs’ 141. Third-place Southern Utah scored 149.
Long Beach State senior Ryley Fick earned the individual victory on the Ag-Ops’ 6-kilometer course in 20 minutes, 7.5 seconds.
Cal Poly did win on the men’s side with 59 points, while second-place Southern Utah completed a strong, overall showing with 90 points.
Arizona State junior Vincent Mauri, a third-place finisher at the meet a year ago and an NCAA outdoor finalist in the 5,000 meters, outlegged Cal Poly sophomore Aidan McCarthy to win the invitational 8-kilometer race in 23:25.7.
Arizona’s women finished 12th at last year’s Pac-12 Championships, but showed renewed vigor Saturday, led by Driskill, an Arizona high school state champion in the 1,600 and 3,200 just three years ago.
“It’s big,” she said. “You know, this is our first team win in a big invite. We won last year, like a home meet, but it’s just a few schools. This is a big deal for us.”
On a very un-Tucson-like day, where clouds didn’t burn off in California’s Inland Empire until noon and temperatures at race time hovered around 60 degrees, Driskill ran to a strong 10th place in 20:35.1.
A pair of freshmen were next with Ericka Cunniam 14th in 20:40.9 and Mia Chavez, a top-five high school finisher in California Division 3 last year from nearby Chino, was 21st in 20:51.5. Sophomore Johnnie Mitchell (42nd, 21:18) and junior Sailor Hutton (59th, 21:29.5) rounded out the Wildcats’ scoring.
Driskill said Wildcats’ coach Bernard Lagat talked to the Arizona women Friday night about strategy and said the goal was to simply win.
“I just think we actually took that to heart,” Driskill said. “Sometimes, you can say, ‘I’m going to win, or my team is going to win. If you don’t…
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