On a cool cloudy morning Dylan Atwater towed the start line with the best runners out of all the community colleges in California to represent the Los Angeles Mission College Eagles.  The race was the culmination of hundreds if not thousands of miles that began in the early summer and with a string of races that landed him amongst the best in the state.

With a more loaded and competitive field, and modestly more challenging course with rolling hills, Atwater navigated a respectable performance, running a 22:49 for the 4 miles course, finishing a bit outside the top 100 runners in a field of over 160.  While a little short of what he had hoped for, overall it was a successful season, one that saw Atwater go well beyond his best times from high school, with clutch performances that helped him reach the day's State meet. Atwater stated, "I want to be back here next year with a full team competing for those top spots collectively and as an individual getting into the top 100 of this field.  It feels good to be here representing the college and being amongst the best in the state, but I want more and look forward to making those improvements next year."

For Coach Laguna this was only the first step in creating a program that he believes will be as competitive as any program in the state.  Laguna stated, "This is just a taste of what I expect to come for us.  With a great athlete like Dylan, and the efforts of myself and [Assistant] Coach Tim Gutierrez to recruit the top talent in our area, we have no doubt that we will be back here next season making even bigger strides.  We are very proud of what Dylan did today and through the season, and very thankful to everyone along the way that helped us get here, from our support staff to our strength and conditioning coach, Joel Gunterman.  It was a great team effort! Go Eagles!"

Results:

https://www.tfrrs.org/results/xc/19137/CCCAA_2021_State_Championships