by Ricky Quintana
Jacksonville, FL– This author would have expected Belen Jesuit (Miami, FL) to have a dip in team performance on Friday night at the Cecil Field Classic at New World Golf Course. They graduated three seniors from a team that finished fourth at Nike Cross Nationals last year. However, as is their wont, the Wolverines proved that they are going to be a formidable team on the national scene this upcoming season as they finished with 23 points and a top five team average of 15:31.2.
Leading the way was sophomore Marcelo Mantecon. The 3,200m freshman HS national record holder 8:50.02 was impressive Friday night in his first race of the season. He was coming off a stress fracture he suffered after his record setting performance at the Arcadia Invitational in early April and had kept him from running for two months. His only running came when he finished third in the 1,600m in 4:10.88 and sixth in the 3,200m in 9:27.64 at the state track meet in May. A return to training after the state meet did not fare well.
“ I tried running again two weeks after[ the state track meet], but it still hurt, so I was a month without training before I could start,” he said after his race.
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Despite missing two months of training, he looked as good as ever Friday. As Belen Head Coach Frankie Ruiz said afterwards, Mantecon is a bit of an outlier for his team.
“ What’s remarkable about Marcelo is that he trains next to these guys. His workouts are no different from everyone else’s. The rest of those guys have a little bit of catching up to him, but it’s pretty nice to see that they went out pretty hard. Obviously he separated himself, but I saw him looking back. He’s more concerned about the gap he’s got between him and his teammates than the field.”
Mantecon dictated the race from the start moving to the front and leading through the first mile in the 4:40s by a half step over upstart Jonathan Pena (Westminster Academy, Fort Lauderdale, FL). At halfway, he he hit 7:25 which was one second slower than Patrick Koon’s split when he ran the course record of 15:15 in 2021 and five seconds up on Pena and teammate Diego Magarino.
Another 12 seconds back was Drew Beroset (Gulf Breeze, FL). Beroset was coming off a splendid freshman year of his own, running the seventh fastest two mile time in US HS history, 9:03.93, and the ninth best 1,600m time, 4:11.27 (Mantecon is the eighth best with his 4:10.88) ….
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