Local cross-country teams power up for season-ending meets

BILL SPARKES/Acorn Newspapers JUMP FOR JOY—Simi Valley’s Alexia Burton, left, finished 15th at the girls’ individual race at the Ventura County Cross Country Championships at Lake Casitas in Ojai. Her teammate, Anna Sperry, won the individual title with a time of 17:55. With the Marmonte League meets for boys’ and girls’ cross country finished yesterday on the Agoura High course, the league’s teams begin their annual run to the season-ending championship meets:

• Sat., Nov. 12, the California Interscholastic Federation Prelims at Mt. San Antonio College in Walnut.

• Sat., Nov. 19 CIF Finals at Mt. SAC.

• And then the big meet on Sat., Nov. 26—the State Championships at Woodward Park, Fresno.

In these and all meets, each team is allowed seven runners with five scoring and the remaining two able to displace the other team’s runners based on how they place in the meet,

Royal boys’ head coach Ryan Luce, who works with girls’ head coach Jay Sramek, is pleased that his team’s wins during this and five previous seasons have come not only from the first five runners, but also the next two. Several others can be substituted and the coach can still field a winning entry. “In this sport you cannot win off one person, it has to come from the entire seven,” he said. “Whenever there is one who is having a bad day, we have great depth, we have nine depth. This is the strongest seven I’ve ever had. We can rest guys and get them healthy and the other guys take the work.”

Most recently, the Highlander boys’ team hasn’t had senior Jason Pedersen or junior Michael Cybulski, out with injuries, included in the five or seven runners.

“The team does not look at themselves as individuals,” Luce said. “It is a team of seven. They set goals for the races. The sixseventh (runners) are only a few seconds behind.” The coach added, “Hopefully we will be at full strength at state.”

Pedersen is the heart of the team and has been on the team the longest time.

“He lives and breathes cross country and track,” Luce said. “When he gets injured, he does anything he can do to stay alive. He’s really helped his teammates.”

Cybulski has been No. 1 all year and is better than last year. “He’s the 3200 champ and he has embraced cross country,” the coach said. “He is very competitive and wants to do the best he can.”

Royal’s common thread is that the goals are all in line, Luce said. “It is amazing to watch them train. One runner never leaves the other’s side from the first repetition to the very last. It’s very unique to have a team like that.

“State (the state meet at Fresno) is what we’re training for and I know that they want to leave their mark at Royal. They want to leave with the course record and the course record at Agoura too.”

Last week in the warm-up event for yesterday’s league meet, teams ran in the Ventura County Championships at Lake Casitas. Royal won the boys’ 3-mile run with a low score of 36 points and a 16:13.09 average time and Oak Park was second at 97 and 16:40.33.

The next eight schools were third place Camarillo, (107 points) 16:33.96; fourth, Rio Mesa, (137) 16:58.19; fifth, Westlake, (170) 16:58.64; sixth, Thousand Oaks, (184) 17:12.84; seventh, Buena, (192) 17:14.92; eighth, Ventura, (193) 17:14.33; ninth, Hueneme, (202) 17:18.01; 10th Agoura, (204) 17:13.92.

The remaining nine schools running in the boys’ meet were 11th-place Moorpark, (278) 17:38.31; 12th Nordhoff, (294) 17:40.34; 13th Malibu, (344) 17:56.89; 14th Newbury Park, (379) 18:04.38; 15th Fillmore, (388) 18:03.85; 16th Oxnard, (500) 19:18.29; 17th Pacfica, (527) 20:13.49; 18th Villanova, (544) 20:00.08, and 19th Channel Islands, (537) 16:13.09.

The Oak Park girls won the 3mile event with a low score of 69 points and an average time of 19:23.93, followed by Ventura, (87 points) 19:48.60; Royal, (92) 19:46.58; Westlake, (98) 19:44.03, and Simi Valley, (146) 19:58.97.

In sixth place for the girls was Rio Mesa, (174) 20:30.52, followed by seventh Thousand Oaks, (205) 20:42.02; eighth Buena, (229) 20:58.23; ninth Moorpark, (235) 21:03.35; 10th Camarillo, (253) 21:11.57; 11th Agoura, (269) 21:33.51; 12th St. Bonaventure, (314) 21:50.96; 13th La Reina, (327) 21:48.39; 14th Oxnard, (335) 22:00.25; 15th Newbury Park, (372) 22:22.97; 16th Thacher, (425) 23:02.53 and 17th Malibu, (574) 24:48.61.

The first five finishers in the boys’ race were first place, senior Ted Price, Camarillo, 15:35.31; second, junior Cory Primm, Westlake, 15:45.21; third, junior Hudson Andrews, Royal, 15:48.16; fourth, senior Chris Sanchez, Camarillo, 15:51.75; fifth, junior Anthony Pondella, Oak Park, 15:57.97.

Simi Valley girls’ cross country coach Roger Evans, who coaches with boys’ coach Linda Haverlation, said the Pioneer boys are sort of like the girls.

“We didn’t have too much as the season started,” he said. “We had some frosh-soph come out and they have developed into strong varsity runners.”

These include juniors Michael Dellemonico and C.J. Young.

In the county meet, the next five finishers for the boys were sixth-place junior Jun Reichl, Royal, 16:01.75; seventh, junior Chris Baird, Agoura, 16:14.52; eighth, senior Miguel Cisneros, Santa Clara, 16:20.67; ninth, senior Kevin Sullivan, Royal, 16:24.09, and 10th, junior Daniel Benson, Royal, 16:25.28.

Evans said freshmen Michael and Steven Semler and Adam Zoller stepped in and have done well this year, as has junior Hikaru Tsukagoshi off the froshsoph team. “We intend to be competitive,” the coach said.

With junior Jeff Liston, “truthfully we are a year away,” Evans said, adding that the Pioneers have one senior, Scott Melendez, and the rest of the team will be back next year.

Junior Anna Sperry, Simi Valley, led the girls’ run with 17:55.02, followed by second Jasmine Hayes, Westlake, 18:26.62; third sophomore Courtney Lightfoot, Oak Park, 18:37.30; fourth sophomore Marissa Diehl, Oak Park, 18:43.09; fifth sophomore Jenessa Rose, St. Bonaventure, 18:53.75.

Speaking about Sperry, Evans said that not only has she contributed by being the Pioneers’ first girls’ runner, she has in many ways been a catalyst this season.

“They (other runners) have rallied around Anna, and they know we have a front-runner and will pull their weight,” Evans said. “It takes everybody on the team to win.”

In sixth-place for the girls was junior Tali Sproat, Moorpark, 19:05.24, followed by seventh senior Kelcie Wiemann, Royal, 19:12.23; eighth sophomore Sally Venable, Ventura, 19:25.72; ninth freshman McKay Shaw, Ventura, 19:28.19; and 10th sophomore Victoria Smith, Westlake, 19:28.20.

“We’ve tried to make our team this year. The prospects at the beginning of the season did not look promising as we only had one runner from last year,” Evans said.

Junior Alexia Burton and seniors Rosalyn Sutton, Alisha Aiello and Rosalyn Sutton, the Simi Valley coach said, are making a strong contribution to the team this season.

Evans said that junior Christy Severance has had a history of getting injured in the middle of October, but this year, so far, she’s been injury free.

“We changed her training regimen this year and our others who were coming off our JV and froshsoph without a lot of promise at that level, they put in a lot of work to become champions.”