Fresno City College cross country has had a great year of running, but it came down to the last race of the conference to determine if they would come out on top.

In order to do so, the men needed to have good races all around and they got just that—the end result: a Central Valley Conference title.

“I knew that in order for us to come away with the championship, our team would have to finish ahead of COS and we did that,” said Rams runner Germay Tesfai.

Tesfai, who has arguably been the anchor of the men’s team this season, had another stellar performance in his last race leading up to the Nor-Cal race this Thursday. Tesfai and his teammates had a good start out of the gate Thursday.  As the race was approaching its last mile to the finish line, Tesfai and fellow FCC runners Jon Ross and Derek Guthrey had the top three positions wrapped up and seemingly finished the race on cruise control.

“I’m really excited to see that we were able to clinch the conference title,” said Tesfai.  “We worked hard this season in practices and races leading up to today and it paid off for us.”

On the women’s side, Beth Tademy led the group of women runners as they also were able to be crowned the best in the CVC.

Tademy finished second in her race behind College of Sequoias’ Brianna Diaz, but was more concerned about the team accomplishment rather than the individual.

“She [Diaz] ran a really good race today,” said Tademy. “Her approach to the race kind of caught me off guard, but it’s ok. I didn’t win that many races this year, but I did reach a new PR [personal record] today and helped my team, so I’m happy with that.”

Coach Gary Bluth was happy with the team’s showing and credits all the hard work they put in during the season to get that CVC title.

“These guys worked really hard all year to get to this point today,” said Bluth. “We came into today knowing that the guys had to run well in order to get the title and they did just that.”

The Rams are now preparing for the Nor-Cal Championships this Thursday. If the Rams place well, they will then move on to the State Championships on Nov. 20.

Komen Race:

On Oct. 23, the Fresno City College cross country team participated in the Susan B. Komen race for the cure at Fresno State.

For the men’s 5K race, Rams runner Germay Tesfai finished the course in a time of 14:46, one second shy of course record.

On the women’s side, Rams runner Beth Tademy finished first in her age group with a time of 18:26. Tademy’s time set a new course record by ten seconds.

Overall, FCC had 14 of their 15 runners medal in the event.