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Connor Vanderweyst/Columbia Basin Herald (Left to right) RJ Koreis, Gabe Garza, Joey Robertson and Jon Ochoa have Moses Lake’s 4x100 relay in the state meet for the first time in 33 years.
MOSES LAKE — Jon Ochoa, Gabe Garza, Joey Robertson and RJ Koreis were unaware they made history until after their 4x100 relay race on the first day of the District 6 Championships.
The quartet finished second in front of Eisenhower to capture one of two state berths in the event. The extra wrinkle, however, was that no Moses Lake 4x100 relay had qualified for the state meet since 1985 — until that Thursday.
Moses Lake assistant coach Jennifer Carpenter, whose husband ran on the 1985 relay team, broke the news.
The team’s reaction?
“Kind of speechless,” Garza said. “We were just really surprised and at a loss of words.”
Ochoa echoed his teammates sentiments: “It was humbling because we worked all year for this.”
Outside of the Pasco Invitational, Moses Lake has finished first or second in every meet its competed in. Now, the Chiefs are scheduled to compete in the first of two preliminary races at state. Reaching finals may be difficult, but they do have one particular goal in mind.
“Just to keep working hard and get some clean hand-offs and beat Sunnyside,” Robertson said.
The Chiefs’ seed time of 44.38 seconds is less than half a second behind the Grizzlies’ 43.94.
Opening some eyes is also on the agenda.
“We’re getting slept on,” Koreis said. “We’re like seeded one of the lowest teams and nobody’s even thinking about Moses Lake.”
There’s an obvious answer to the team’s success — they’re all fast. But upon further reflection, chemistry has played a large role in reaching the final meet of the season.
All four played defensive back for Moses Lake’s football team in the fall. What’s more, the relay has been set for the entirety of the season, allowing for trust to build race after race.
“We’ve known each other and we’ve been able to get that chemistry throughout the whole year and this is not our first year in track, so we’ve all been able to know each other from track, too,” Ochoa said.
Moses Lake heads over the Cascade Range today. All that’s left to do is race.
“You can’t let the big stage get to you,” Ochoa said. “You’ve got to run your hardest and don’t care about if other teams are ahead of you or not. You’ve just got to run.”