Fort Stockton’s Ali Jackson and Fabian Perez are headed back to the state cross country meet.

They’ll be joined by Juan Vela after the trio qualified for state at the 4A Region 1 Championship on Tuesday in Lubbock at Mae Simmons Park.

Perez, a senior, improved his finish at regionals from a season ago from 17th place in 2021 to 13th place this past Tuesday. Perez cut his 5K time by four seconds, crossing the finish line in 16 minutes 49 seconds.

The upperclassman was second in the race out of non-team qualifiers.

Jackson improved her two-mile time from 2021 by 18 seconds (12:31) and placed 13th as a result. The easily made the cutoff as she placed second out of the non-team qualifiers, behind only freshman Elyse Santiago of Monahans, who finished the race 12:26.1.

The senior, Vela, punched his ticket to the state meet with a 29th place finish in 17:23. Vela secured the last qualify position out of all non-team qualifiers at the meet.

Freshman Summer Hinojos put forth a performance that leaves plenty of promise for the future. Hinojos missed out on qualifying for the girl’s state meet in 4A by one second as the underclassman placed 28th in a time of 12:55. The time would have been good enough to qualify in 2021 but times nearly improved by 20 seconds across the board in the girls race.

Fellow freshman Diego Ronquillo took 99th out of 176 boy cross country runners. Ronquillo did so by crossing the finish line in 19 minutes.

Brothers Aryan and Jesus Hernandez ran their final race together at the high school level and placed 82nd and 138th respectively. Jesus is a senior and Aryan is a junior.

Arissa Jimenez (78th) and Marlayna Salmon (119th) rounded out the varsity scorers for the girls team.

The Panthers placed eighth as a team out of 24 teams while the Prowlers took 14th out of 24 squads.

“The Fort Stockton cross country team worked hard all year as a unit and really earned every bit of their success. Their moral of a team was amazing and I truly appreciate their grind and sacrifice. It was a privilege to see these runners get after it on a daily basis,” head coach Sergio Guardiola said.

Team Scores

Boys

1. Canyon 24; 2. Big Spring 71; 3. San Elizario 73; 4. Sanger 107; 5. Dumas 169; 6. Andrews 224; 7. Randall 250; 8. Fort Stockton 304; 9. Stephenville 328; 10. Springtown 335

Girls

1. Dumas 63; 2. Randall 67; 3. Canyon 75; 4. Sanger 79; 5. Bridgeport 229; 6. Andrews 234; 7. Glen Rose 242; 8. Brownwood 264; 9. San Elizario 272; 10. Decatur 274