Henry Domine is an ASU Cronkite School of Journalism student assigned to cover Arcadia High School for AZPreps365.com

Arcadia placed 33rd and 16th in the boys and girls varsity races during the Ojo Rojo Invitational on Saturday.

Mountain View (Mesa) won both the boys and girls varsity races at the 5K event hosted by Chandler High School in Tumbleweed Park.

The Titans' top boys runner, senior Scott Gurley, individually placed 150th had the Titans' boys and girls teams' best time 18 minutes, 55 seconds, his personal record. Kate Marinick timed in at 22:22.1 was 79th, the highest placement for Arcadia.

Gurley's time was a great improvement from his first race of the year at the Peaks Invitational on Sept. 3. When he spoke about his mindset entering Saturday's race, he said, “I wasn’t feeling too confident because I didn’t get much sleep last night and didn’t eat well.”

However, Gurley "started feeling pretty well” once the race started.

Another Arcadia senior Leonardo Montoya spoke about team goals for the end of the season.

“Our goal is to make state, but we also need to inspire our teammates,” Montoya said.

He finished at 20:38 and placed 213th.

"We have a very relaxed mindset, but when we need to get going, we will get very serious," Montoya said about his team's philosophy.

Arcadia is poised to enter the nationally renowned Desert Twilight Festival in Mesa on September 30.

Gurley hyperfocuses at a very large race he enters

"Every race I go into it not comparing myself to anyone else and I just try to beat my personal record and improve myself," Gurley said.

Arcadia senior Xavier Ortiz said he's excited to enter the Twilight meet.

Ortiz also gave spoke about competing his first cross country season..

“I like how the team pushes me and the camaraderie," Ortiz said. “I going to keep on improving, but being out there and pushing myself is intense.”

Arcadia head coach Sarah Boustila praised her team after the Titans' second meet of the season.

"Everyone ran awesome. Everyone usually feels great after this race, because we do Flagstaff first and then they come here and realize they can run pretty fast," Boustila said.

She also mentioned that there were many of her boys and girls runners who achieved PRs on the course at Tumbleweed Park, and looked forward to Desert Twilight for them to do the same.

Last year they all got personal records at Twilight and I expect the same this year, they have trained a lot since last year.”

As for the training philosophy of the Arcadia cross country team, Boustila said that they use “both high mileage and interval training."