After making history in Fresno at his team’s first meet, LPC sophomore runner Abraham Espinoza wasted no time following up that performance with an encore at the Lou Vasquez Invitational on Sept. 19 in San Francisco.
Espinoza broke yet another LPC record, this time for fastest finish at the Lou Vasquez meet. He finished with a time of 20:07. His hard work and dedication in the offseason received rave reviews from his coaches. Now Espinoza is benefitting from all those extra miles he has been running in practice.
“I have always set high goals for myself,” Espinoza said. “I met failure when I first started the sport, but I never got discouraged. Instead, I learned from those failures and used it as motivation to dedicate and commit myself to training.”
Espinoza was just a middle-of-the-pack runner on the team last year as a freshman. When the season ended he decided to change his eating habits. He gave up fast food and made sure to run at least 75 miles a week, no excuses.
Head Coach Steve Navarro was once again in awe of Espinoza’s performance in San Francisco. He is hoping that the performances become regularity.
“He made it look so easy,” Navarro said. “He ran his first mile at the meet under five minutes. That’s incredible. Not many people can do that.”
Espinoza finished fourth in a field of 134 runners and the team as a whole finished sixth overall out of 13 schools. Navarro says the team is now on pace to make it to the state championships, thanks to the impressive back-to-back performances from Espinoza.
“Abe’s got a chance to do some really special things this year,” Navarro said. “I’m proud of all of our runners for the effort they are putting in. Abe is just on another level right now.”
While Espinoza has looked dominant in his past two meets, he remains humble and motivated to keep putting together top performances in future events.
“I was overwhelmed by the accomplishment,” Espinoza said. “It shows how hard work and dedication pay off in incredible ways. We will definitely have to see how the rest of the season plays out to properly gauge the true success of the season.”
Other notable performances from the meet were freshman runners Timothy West and Juan Morales, who finished with times of 21:24 and 21:27, respectively.
Espinoza will get his next chance to break more records when the team travels to Folsom on Oct. 5 for the Beaver Invitational.