Cross Country: Escalante happy to be back in action for Crane

>> READY TO RUN AGAIN: Before every race this season, Nick Escalante hits his knees.

To thank God for the opportunity to run.

During a cross country meet last season, Escalante, then a sophomore at Crane, collapsed due to dehydration. Diagnosed with hypertrophic cardiomyopathy, Escalante was told he could never run again.

Until late in the Crane track season.

“They thought I had HCM,” Escalante said. “But there’s another disease called athletic heart, where your heart gets big as you run and play sports, and it gets smaller after you’re done.”

Six months after he was diagnosed with HCM — which is diagnosed by recognizing an abnormally large heart — Escalante’s heart had nearly returned to normal size.

Doctors cleared him to run.

Escalante ran two miles with his Crane teammates the very next day.

Back in purple-and-gold, Escalante finished second at the Lubbock Invitational in late September.

But in the weeks leading up to the Odessa Invitational, Escalante strained his right quadriceps, and the very next week he came down with the flu.

Leading up to Thursday’s Odessa Invitational, Escalante hadn’t run in almost two weeks. He chose to run anyway. Shortly after the start, he fell, and after trying to get back into it, Escalante dropped out because of the fatigue associated with the flu.

“I wanted to get another shot at gold,” Escalante said. “I probably shouldn’t have run.”

Escalante wasn’t the only Crane runner who struggled Thursday.

Josh Daniel lost a shoe early in the race, tried to continue but was forced to leave the race after picking up a series of stickers in his sock-covered foot.

“We didn’t have all of our runners,” Crane coach Barry Beverly said. “Two runners were playing JV football, and this week in Crane we’ve been racked with the flu. We have to get everybody healed back up.”

>> FIGHTING THE FLU: Andrews sophomore Lucas Marquez tried to stick with Kermit’s Trey Bale, who won the boys race in 16:13.9.

Fighting off the effects of an illness that left him out of school for four days last week and kept him out of the Sundown Invitational last Sunday, Marquez couldn’t hold pace and finished fourth in 16:45.0.

“My strategy for today was to go out faster than normal and try to keep the pace,” Marquez said. “I had a little trouble because I was sick last week, and it’s really been affecting me the last couple of days.”

Doctors told Marquez he didn’t have the flu.

But his teammates have been battling a variety of ailments, including the flu. Top girls runner Stormy Sandell had to miss the Odessa Invitational with a hip injury.

“Last week we were hit hard with the flu,” Andrews coach Mike Waldman said. “This year the flu has come out a couple months earlier than it has in the past, and everybody has had to deal with it.”

>> ALONE AT THE FRONT: Normally Alpine junior Alyssa Fields has a teammate to chase.

Freshman Rashae Skillern has helped Fields set the pace all season long.

But without Skillern at the Odessa Invitational Thursday — the freshman stayed home with the flu — Fields had to set her own pace to run away with the 2A-JV girls title in 13:34.2, a full three-quarters of a minute better than second-place finisher Leslie Villa of Crane, who finished in 14:20.5.

Running at the front of the pack, Fields burst away from the rest of the field on the long, sloping hill at UTPB park that lines the pond and put the field in her rearview mirror.

“I usually run with Rashae,” Fields said. “After I turned the corner, though, I knew the rest of the course, and I started striding it out because I knew I could win.”

>> MAKING THE MOST OF IT: Running in a district that includes Class 2A powers Kermit and Crane can make it hard to get a win.

But with the Yellow Jackets and Golden Cranes competing in the 3A-5A division at the Odessa Invitational, Alpine senior Tony Moralez took advantage to win the 2A-JV race in 17:18.5.

“I came into this race excited,” Moralez said. “Since Kermit wasn’t in it, I knew I had to take advantage, and I tried to get to the front right away.”

Moralez finished a 1:33 ahead of sophomore teammate Kyle Parker, who finished second.