Athletes of the week

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AOW_JeremyBloom-2
Jeremy Bloom

Julie Khil (junior) played for Occidental’s women’s soccer team in their game against Redlands Saturday with broken ribs, but not a broken spirit. Khil sustained the injury by colliding with her goalie during practice earlier that week, but come game day she strapped on a rib-protecting jacket under her uniform. Pushing through the pain, Khil scored the first goal of the game in the 38th minute and set the pace for Occidental to beat the top team in the SCIAC 2-0.

“I had trouble breathing sometimes, but the hardest was being careful about jumping and contact because it did hurt sometimes if a player hit that side of my body,” Khil said.

Khil is confident that the young team will come back even stronger next year.

“Nowhere to go but up from here,” she said.

 

AOW_JeremyBloom
Jeremy Bloom

Tommy Warfel (senior) augmented his unfaltering cross country season with a sixth-place finish out of 124 runners in the SCIAC Championship meet in Chino, California, Saturday. He has consistently been the top runner for Occidental’s men’s team, which placed third in the championship race. Just shy of his goal to finish in the top five individuals, Warfel still earned All-SCIAC honors for the first time in his running career — a drastic improvement from his previous best SCIAC performance of 35th place. Warfel ran the eight-thousand-meter race tactically and aggressively; he went out hard at the sound of the starting gun in order to show that he belonged in the top ten racers and then wrestled with a pack from Claremont-Mudd-Scripps close behind the leaders during the middle of the race.

“My focus at that point was to stay in contact with the pack without doing too much work so that I could break them towards the end of the race,” Warfel said via email.

Warfel was happy with his team’s placement, but not surprised.

“I was particularly happy with the performances by Jovani Barajas [sophomore], Andrew Jack [sophomore] and Robbie George [senior] because they had major breakthrough races to finish in our top seven.”

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