Cardenas & Villa Finish Neck-and-Neck in First Place Finish at Palomar Invitational
Sophomore Ricardo Cardenas (John W. North HS) and freshman Enrique Villa (Colton HS) finished a mere 3.7 seconds from one another at the Palomar Invitational on Friday evening. Cardenas snapped the tape to haul in a gold medal finish, while Villa settled for the silver as they led their team to a first-place finish with a combined time of 1:46.14.
Riverside was the top finisher by approximately five seconds as they hauled in their first top finish of the 2017 season.
"We were really pleased with the guy's performance, because they followed the race plan to perfection," said 2016 Coach of the Year Jim McCarron. "The goal this week was to improve our gap between our first and fifth runners."
Cardenas paced the field with an overall time of 21:00.9 with includes an average mile time of 5:15.3 to hand him first place. This meet is Cardenas' first-career meet victory.
Villa was not far behind by crossing the finish line at a mark of 21.03.2 that encompassed a 5:15.8 average mile time en route to his first-career podium finish at second place.
Seven other Tigers rounded out the top-10 as they are listed below:
| Name | Place | Year | Avg. Mile | Time |
| Gabriel Sanchez | 4th | Freshman | 5:18.9 | 21:15.4 |
| Angel Campos | 5th | Freshman | 5:21.1 | 21:24.4 |
| Deion Molina | 6th | Freshman | 5:22.6 | 21:30.4 |
| Austin Dai | 7th | Freshman | 5:23.4 | 21:33.3 |
| Michael Robinson | 8th | Freshman | 5:27.2 | 21:48.8 |
| Alec Hall | 9th | Freshman | 5:28.0 | 21:51.9 |
| Christopher Perez | 10th | Freshman | 5:29.2 | 21:56.8 |
| Jeffrey Robbins | 12th | Freshman | 5:32.2 | 22:08.5 |
The Tigers will continue action on Friday, September 15th at the So Cal Preview at Central Park in Santa Clarita, CA.