Pullano, Fontes star for Fremont

By Dick Sparrer

Santa Clara's Girmay Guangul seems to be rewriting the record books this fall... or at least he has for the past couple of weeks.

The talented cross country runner set a new course record on his way to a victory in the Central Park Invitational in Santa Clara a couple of weeks ago, and he backed that up with a win in record time on the two-mile course at the Saratoga Invitational.

Guangul covered the two miles in 9:51.8 to set the new course mark and outrun Zack Regner of Los Gatos to the finish line. Guangul broke his own course mark of 10:01.9 set last year.

Regner nailed second in 10:25, just beating John Fong (10:27) of Los Altos and Lenin Zapata (10:28) of Santa Clara to the finish chute.

Jacob Christopherson of Saratoga was close behind in fifth place in 10:36, and his effort was good enough to lead the Falcons to the team title as they competed on their home course on the Saratoga campus.

Eric Fontes of Fremont cracked the top 10 at Saratoga, finishing 10th overall in 10:46. Manuel Hernandez was 32nd in 11:29 with Phil Mandalstamm 39th in 11:40. All three of the Firebirds are juniors.

Junior Nate Harris ran 13:18 for Fremont with senior Tin Tran (13:21) and Queyen Ho (14:32) rounding out the Fremont top six.

Fremont's best effort came in the boys frosh-soph division where individual champion Mike Pullano led the Firebirds to the team title.

Pullano, a freshman, ran 11:12 to finish first overall and lead Fremont to a team win over Wilcox. The Firebirds ran up a low 57 points to edge the Chargers, who were second at 59.

Sophomore Sergio O'Connor finished third in 11:31 with freshman Casey McCleary 14th in 12:11, soph John Seo 16th in 12:16 and Dominic Botello 23rd in 12:40.

Edward Alabanza ended up 45th in 13:21 for Fremont in the boys junior varsity race.

Junior Thuyen Kim led all Fremont girls with a 37th-place finish in 14:55. Andrea Ancona was 39th in 14:59 with Kristen Kam 50th in 15:14.

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