Pirates earn second place at 3C2A State Meet!

FRESNO -- The magical season of the Orange Coast College women's cross country team ended on a magical note as the Pirates earned a second-place team finish at the 2025 3C2A Women's Cross Country State Meet on Saturday at Woodward Park.

This year's Orange Empire Conference champions and SoCal Regional runners-up, earned that same position against the best in all of California with a team score of 115, bettered only by state powerhouse, Mt. San Antonio College (50 points), winners of four of the last five state championships.

Defending state champion, San Diego Mesa College, finished third overall with 149 points, followed by De Anza (179), Hartnell (217), Moorpark (222), College of the Sequoias (237), American River (262), Clovis (262) and Cerritos (309) for the state's top-10 totals.

"Overall, the race went well, the weather cooperated and it turned out to be a great race," OCC head coach Marco Ochoa said. "It was a collective effort by everyone on the team and taking second place is a great achievement."

Three OCC runners -- Jocelyn Alba, Alejandra Reyburn and Jasmin Trujillo -- earned top-30 finishes in the 169-runner field. Alba -- the 2025 OEC champion -- used a strong final mile to move up two spots and finished fourth in the state with a time of 18 minutes, 9.9 seconds, less than 30 seconds off of the state-winning time of 1740.2, set by Moorpark College's Maya Matarajan. A pair of Mesa runners finished second and third, respectively with Jazzlyn Islas taking second at 17:51.5 and Natalie Allen placing third at 18:08.4. Abla's 18:09.9 was seven seconds faster than her SoCal Regional time of 18:16 from two weeks ago. 

Reyburn also passed several runners down the stretch and finished 26th in the state with a time of 19:09.7, with Trujillo right behind her in 27th with a time of 19:13.9. ALL of OCC's runners finished with faster times at the State Meet than at the SoCal Regionals. 

"The girls were very consistent throughout the whole season and never lost focus," Ochoa said. "Everyone on the team performed extremely well with Jocelyn leading the pack and finishing fourth overall. I could not ask anything more from them as they really peaked on their performance at the right time."

Close behind the top OCC runners were Belle Baker (19:34.9), Mariana Hernandez (19:57.6), Isabel Ramirez (21:11.5) and Cassandra Garcia (22:31.9). And, with a freshmen-heavy squad this year, who knows what the future holds for the Pirates in 2026.

"I'm very proud of the girls," Ochoa said. "They trained very hard throughout the season, made some sacrifices and the summer training really paid off for them."