The Patterson High cross country team didn’t have its best day Saturday, Nov. 14.

No Patterson individuals or teams advanced to the state meet following the outing at the Sac-Joaquin Section championships in Folsom. But that didn’t stop coach Dave Klein from reflecting upon the successful season his runners had.

“We had a very good season with some very good results,” Klein said of his Tigers, whose varsity and junior varsity girls won Western Athletic Conference titles for the second-straight season. “We ran all right at sections, considering we were not at full strength for one reason or another.

“We needed to be a full strength to reach our goals, and that was not possible.”

Patterson sent a freshman-sophomore girls team and a sophomore boys team to compete at Willow Park on Saturday.

Klein said the Tigers ran hard, but the level of competition had increased over the past year, and illnesses continued to hit the team at the wrong time.

“We were kind of reeling from being sick a little bit,” Klein said. “It has been a good team, but (Saturday) was not our day.”

The Patterson freshman-sophomore girls finished third overall, led by Meghan Wraa’s time of 15 minutes, 12 seconds, on the 2-mile course. Wraa finished in eighth place overall.

Maritza Vega (15:17), Marisabel Carrillo (15:35), Sarah Cote (16:22), Shalini Bakshi (16:35), Laura Thompson (16:57) and Sandy Luo (17:25) rounded out Patterson’s final times.

“The girls ran good, considering we only had three of them feeling 100 percent,” Klein said. “Meghan and Maritza ran one and two for us, with respectable times. Marisabel ran with heart, but her health was not good.”

The Patterson sophomore boys were led by Roberto Sanchez in the 2-mile race. Sanchez finished in 18th place with a time of 13:13. Teammates Benjamin Vega (14:00), Chris Teran (14:45) and Edgar Malagon (15:41) weren’t far behind.

For now, the focus turns to next season, when Klein expects his runners to again contend for league titles and to make a deeper impact in the postseason.

“Our program is on the upswing, and we are definitely going to be looking for bigger and better results in the future, especially at the subsection and section meets,” Klein said. “We have a lot of athletes coming back, and we know that we will have a few additions to the program. It is definitely exciting.”