Cabrillo High School has turned out some great runners in the last few years, and coach Louie Quintana was excited to recruit four of them to run for the Allan Hancock College cross country team this season.
One of these guys in particular has been putting up some great finishes for the Bulldogs. Oscar Torres, 18, has finished fourth in two of the three meets he’s run so far this year, beating out hundreds of competitors. And those were still relatively small meets.
Quintana said that if Torres ran well at the Southern California Premier meet in Bakersfield on Oct. 3 and 4, the coach would know he has a champion on his hands. Apparently, Torres is going to have a great season, because he finished third out of runners from more than 40 schools at the Southern California meet.
“I think he can win our conference,” Quintana said.
Torres has been running since his sophomore year of high school when his P.E. coach (who was also the cross country coach at Cabrillo) talked him into trying out for the team. Torres, a former soccer player, said that he still remembers his first 8-mile run.
“I wanted to quit because I thought it was too long, but I stuck with it and it paid off,” Torres said.
Now Torres runs up to 15 miles at a time, and hits the pavement every single day, usually in the morning.
“The hardest thing to do is get out bed and run,” he said.
Still, this Hancock student is willing to do whatever it takes to be a champion—even if that means not sleeping in. m
This article appears in Oct 9-16, 2008.