Royal's Rudy Flores places 23 at invitational meet

MOSES LAKE — Rudy Flores took a deep breath, then looked down at his shoes for a moment. When he looked back up again the Royal senior just nodded. “We’re going to dedicate this season to Silver. I talked with Connell and they went in on it,” said Flores of his running mate Royal Hall of Fame runner Silver Beltran, who passed away last spring. “It’s kind of cool that Connell is dedicating their season too. I mean, we want to beat them in everything and they want to beat us, but Silver earned his respect and we’re going to go out and compete as hard as we can in his memory.” A year ago, Flores and Beltran proved that distance running isn’t about where you come from or how big your school is, it’s about training hard and racing well and they finished 10th and 11th, respectively, in the predominantly 4A field.

This year, Cascade (Leavenworth) sophomore Landon Davies won the race and freshman teammate Owen Bard finished second. But Connell put three in the top 10 to win the boys varsity meet by 33 points. The Royal boys were seventh and Othello finished 11th.

“I’m still working on getting in shape. Connell had five guys in front of me, so I need to get back to work,” Flores said.

“I’m the most experience runner on our team, but we have some pretty good guys that came up from the middle school this year. We’ll be OK.”

Flores placed 23rd to lead the Knights.

Freshman Fernando Alvarado (29), Jozaki Shunsuke (44), Miguel Villafana (46) and Braydon Buster (53) rounded out the scoring five.

David Maldonado finished 23rd to lead the Othello boys effort.

Carter Freeman (48), Bryan Lima (62), Emmanuel Atilano (65) and Jovani Espindola (67) were the scoring core for the Huskies.

“I’m very pleased overall. We really haven’t been outside that much because of air quality, so they ran well,” Othello coach JJ Martinez said.

“David missed the state meet last year by a second and he’s been working hard. He’s on a mission because of what one second can mean. We have a pretty experienced group of boys, so we’ll see.”

Sydney Gilbert finished 19th and Abigail Delay was 22nd to lead the Royal girls finished seventh and the Othello girls were ninth. Virginia Pineda placed 37th to lead the Huskies. For complete results visit athletic.net. Girls team scores: 1. Deer Park 43. 2.

Cashmere 69. 3 Moses Lake 79. 4. Cheney 81. 5. Southridge 111. 6. Royal 138. 7. Cascade 178. 8 Connell 215. 9. Othello 226.

Boys team scores: 1.

Connell 53. 2. Cascade 86. 3. Moses Lake 97. 4.

Omak 101. 5. Toppenish 148. 6. Deer Park 179. 7.

Royal 187.8. Okanogan 205. 9. Cashmere 241. 10 Brewster 246. 11. Othello 247. 12. Tri-Cities Prep 260. 13. Garfield-Palouse 396. 14. LaSalle 401.