Big West Cross-Country Championships to take place on Saturday

UC Irvine’s cross-country teams will take on UC Riverside’s Ag/Ops Course for the third time this season when they compete in the Big West Championships on Saturday.

The women’s 6K is at 8:30 a.m., followed by the men’s 8K at 9:15 a.m.

The UCI men’s team is looking to improve its standing in the conference championships for the third year in a row. They finished fourth in the meet last year.

Izzak Mireles could make some noise. He was named Big West Athlete of the Week on Oct. 17 after finishing as the runner-up in the Highlander Invitational on the same course. In that race, Mireles ran 17 minutes 56.9 seconds, which was a new personal record for 6K competitions.

Mireles will be joined by Sam Ayala, Kit Carter, Ashton Garcia, Hector Garcia, Andrew Graciano, Jon Rodriguez and Ravi Sharma on the boys’ side.

“We are excited to get out and see how we stack up against the entire conference,” UCI distance coach Chris Evans said in a press release. “We have improved as a team each race this season and are looking to have our best race at the championship.”

For the women, UCI will be deploying Keely Boyd, Brenda Dorantes, Amy Flores, Anastasia Karnaze, Olympia Martinez, Megan Mirkhanian and Jenessa Reyes to compete.

Cal Poly San Luis Obispo swept the conference titles last year.