Lopez Finds Another Gear in National Championships

A top-10 finish it wasn’t.

But David Lopez of Hoover High did earn All-American honors Saturday when his big kick propelled him to 13th place in the national cross-country championships at Morley Field.

Lopez, a senior, was 16th among 32 runners with less than a quarter-mile remaining, but he stormed past three runners in the homestretch to clock 15 minutes 57.6 seconds over the 5,000-meter course that was soggy from heavy rains earlier in the week.

Abdirizak Mohamud of English High in Boston won the boys’ race in 15:21.0 to edge fellow Somalian native Sharif Karie (15:23.6) of West High in Springfield, Va.

The top five runners were named to the All-American team, with the next five making the second team and the five after that the third team.

“I just sprinted to the finish as hard as I could,” Lopez said. “I’m not sure where that kick came from.”

Lopez was surprised because he had begun to fade in the final mile after moving into 10th place shortly after the two-mile mark.

“The first mile and a half, I felt pretty good,” Lopez said. “But after two miles, I just wanted to finish. I know that’s not a good attitude to have, but I just really started to feel tired around two miles.”

Lopez, who was shooting for a top-10 finish, looked to be running well within himself in the first half of the race. He moved from 31st at the half-mile mark to 24th at the mile to 13th at the midway point. But then a long 13-race season and an all-out race in the West regional on Dec. 7, when he went from fifth to third in the final 150 yards, began to catch up with him.

“My coach was right,” Lopez said. “I should have saved some of my kick from last week for today.”

Hoover Coach Greg Switzer took the blame for Lopez’s fatigue, saying he should have told him to refrain from a hard kick in the West regional after he had secured a top-eight qualifying spot.

“I knew coming in that he had run his best race last week,” Switzer said. “We might have rescued [today’s race] last week if I had told him to shut down once he had a spot, but I didn’t.”

Lopez became the third Hoover runner to earn All-American honors, following Eliazar Herrera’s 11th-place finish in 1989 and Margarito Casillas’ fifth-place mark in ’91. He also laid to rest an injury-marred junior season that ended with a 103rd-place effort in the West regional.

“I’m happy with this season,” Lopez said. “After today, I feel like it makes up for last season. Now I just want to run against some of these guys in track and see how I do.”