Track

The Glendale men and women competed in the WSC finals on APRIL 24 at
the College of the Canyons and walked away with several solid efforts. The top five performances in each event qualified for the Southern California preliminaries on May 1 at Citrus College and the top ten performances in each event there qualified for the State Championships which will be held on May 7 at Bakersfield College.

The following men athletes have qualified for the State Championships: Raymundo Vazquez; 1500 meter run, Aaron Floyd; triple jump, Patrick O’Neil and Humberto Espino; 3,000 steeplechase, Itzel Vargas; 10,000 meter, Sandra Prado; women’s 3000 meter steeplechase, and Sayan Dehghan; women’s pole vault.

“Arghisti was injuried and didn’t compete in the 4 x 400 relay, so we had to ask Patrick to fill in,” said coach Tom McMurray, “we were only a few seconds short from qualifying, but Patrick did a great job filling in for us.”

Coach McMurray’s prediction of being in the top three in the men’s events at the WSC finals did not come true, as the GCC men got the fourth place spot with 72 points behind meet winner Moorpark Community College with 165, Bakersfield College was second with 145 points and Cuesta College was third with 104.

GCC’s O’Neil claimed the Western State Conference title in the 3,000-meter steeplechase in 9:52.1. The 4 x 400 relay team of Trey Jones (49.7), Jonathan Rozelle (49.7, Danny Varges (50.9) and Arghisti Beglaryan (48.1) won the WSC title with a time of 3:19.2.

Espino finished second in the 3,000-meter steeplechase in 10:00.5 and third-place finishers included Rozelle in the 400-meter dash in 49.22, Vargas in the 800-meter in 1:57.9 and Vasquez in the 10,000-meter in 32:23.19.

“I think all of the player did a great job at both the WSC finals and the prelims,” said coach McMurray, “We had some great individual performances and came away with some good times. Even though it was 100 degrees out there, we did a great job.”

Jones also finished fourth in the 200-meter dash in 22:32 and Vasquez finished fourth in the 1,500-meter in 4:06.12. Chris Snyder finished fifth in the 5,000-meter in 16:08.4 and in the 10,000-meter in 32:31.57.
For the women, who finished ninth with 34 points behind meet winner Bakersfield with 157, Sandra Prado won the WSC title in the 3,000-meter steeplechase in 12:13.60. Vanessa Brooks was second in the 400-meter in 1:00.46 and Itzel Vargas was third in the 5,000-meter in 19:16.45 and fifth in the 10,000-meter in 38:57.02.

Tennis

Glendale gave a solid performance at the 104th Annual Ojai Invitational April 22 though April 24. The doubles team of Gevoirt Kirakosyan and Hovsep Gasamanian advanced to the quarter finals before falling in straight sets to Bryan Newell and Jordan Villwock from Saddleback College 6-0, 6-4.

The doubles team of Chris White and Kevin White fell in the second round to Daniel Ndela and Louis Taylor from Fresno City College, 6-3, 6-4. In singles, Kirakosyan lost in the second round to J.D. About from Chabot College 4-6, 6-1, 6-4 and Gasamanian also lost in the second round to Tim Kpulun from Fullerton 6-0, 6-3.

All players who competed at the Ojai Invitiational qualified for the Southern California regional, which were held in Long Beach April 30 and May 1.

The season ended for Glendale when the doubles team of Kirakosyan and Gasamanian fell in the round of 16 at the Southern California Regional Saturday in Long Beach. Kirakosyan and Gasamanian needed to advance to at least the quarterfinals to qualify for the state tournament but lost to Jason Melnick and Vesilius Psyrras from Marymount 6-0, 7-5.

The doubles team of Kevin White and Chris Hernandez fell in the second round to Fullerton’s Tim Kpulun and Danny Salloum 6-2, 6-7, 10-4 and Kirakosyan fell in singles in the second round to Sergio Sanchez from College of the Desert 6-2, 6-2.

The Glendale women’s tennis team also competed in the Ojai Invitational from APRIL 22 through April 24.

Anna Babaian won two singles matches after falling to the eight rankell out the word number) in the state Meghan Ethers from Saddleback, 6-2, 6-4. “My last singles match wasn’t as easy as I thought it would be,” said Babaian. “When I found out that I was facing the number eight ranked in the state, I was kind of nervous, but when I got on the court and started playing everything was going well. The only problem was that I would be up 40 — love, but I wouldn’t be able to close the games.”

The doubles team of Babaian and Debbie Martin won two matches and advanced to the third round before falling to Ethers and Eliza Franciso from Saddleback College, 6-4, 6-2. “There were a lot of situations where I would get the game back to a deuce but Debbie would give the advantage to the other team and I would get it back to deuce and she would give them the advantage again,” said Babaian.

The other doubles team was Anna Mkartcayan and Anna Lisa Vanderhoof. They fell in the first round to Jennifer Chervo and Magnuson in two sets, 7-5, 6-1.

Martin was the only player to represent Glendale in the Southern California Regional last Friday in Fullerton. She fell in the second round to Sayaka Fukumoto from Grossmont College 6-3, 6-0. Martin had defeated Trisha Robles from Riverside 6-1, 6-1 in her first round match.

Baseball

The men’s baseball team made an incredible comeback win over L.A. Mission College, to make it its 6 win in a row on Saturday 10-9 at L.A. Mission College. The Vaqueros scored five times in the ninth inning with two outs and took the lead for good following a game winning RBI from Rene Gonzalez.

Freshman catcher Brett Urie paced the offense with five RBIs, including two on a two-run RBI single in the ninth inning, and went four for four in the game. Rene Gonzalez also had three hits and Bryan Robinson got the win in relief of starter Blake Galien.

The seven game win streak was snapped in a 7-3 loss to Bakersfield College last Thursday, but they bounced back to beat Bakersfield 14-2.
In the victory over the Renegades Saturday at Bakersfield, starting pitcher Blake Gailen pitched seven strong innings to improve to 2-2 overall and 1-0 in conference and the offense was paced by Daniel Lee, who had four hits including two doubles and six RBI. Jesse Hirdler and Brett Urie each doubled and had two hits.