The Hobbton Wildcats started the 2017 cross-country season Tuesday with an invitational tournament for all the schools in the conference, as well as a couple others. The Wildcat men took first place with 19 points.
In the men’s division, Hobbton finished first, Pender was second with 67 points, Princeton was third with 76, Neuse Charter was fourth with 86 and Rosewood was fifth with 98.
The Wildcat men captured the top three spots, with Xavier McLamb finishing with a time of 19 minutes, 23 seconds. Victor Aguirre was second at 20:45 and David Molena was third at 20:46. Neuse Charter and Princeton picked up fourth and fifth, respectively.
For the women, Heide Trask was first, Neuse Charter was second, Pender was third, Rosewood was fourth and Hobbton was fifth.
New cross country and track & field coach Charles Robertson took over the job from previous coach Jeffrey Klaves, who left to be an assistant coach at Campbell University. Robertson was college teammates with Klaves as they ran together from 2005-09. Coach Robertson has experience coaching youth track and football, and AAU basketball. This is his first year at the school level.
“Xavier McLamb put in a lot of work this summer by putting in a lot of miles and ran exceptionally well today,” commented Robertson. “We expect Xavier to have a breakout season as he continues to get stronger. As long as Victor Aguirre, David Molena, Kevin Ibanez and Ty Meyer remain healthy, they are expected to have strong seasons as well. I was very proud of boys as they did what I expected.”
“On the girls side, we have a strong core of girls led by Krystal Martinez. Martinez and Gabrielle Williams have stepped up to the plate as leaders and have been encouraging to our girls. We have a strong core of about seven girls who are still getting into shape and I expect to see much improvement by mid season. The girls are well balanced in that we have some freshman talent as well,” he said.