O.C. cross-country: Sunny Hills excluded from postseason

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Sunny Hills won’t win any Southern Section cross-country championships this year. The school’s boys and girls teams have been excluded from postseason activity because of an illegal practice held on the Mt. San Antonio College course.

Mt. SAC is the host site of the prelims on Saturday and the finals on Nov. 17. It was closed to practices on Nov. 3, but the teams practice there anyway. When school officials found out, they reported the situation to the Southern Section office.

‘It was just negligent on our part,’ said Ralph Trigstad, athletic director at Sunny Hills. ‘We didn’t read the entire bulletin, and they were excited about doing well and they ran the course. There was no malice intended. We had an oversight. We made a mistake.’

Greg Abbott is in his third season as a head coach at Sunny Hills, but this is the first time his team had qualified for the section prelims. The boys finished third in the Freeway League, the girls second.

‘They self-reported and were very respectful of the rules and what it meant for them,’ said Thom Simmons, spokesman for the Southern Section.

The Times received an email from someone identifying himself as ‘sh parent’ asking for our influence in in overturning the ruling.

According to the e-mail, Abbott ‘specifically told his cross country athletes to ‘not wear any clothing or gear that would identify them as members of the Sunny Hills Cross Country team.’

Trigstad said ‘that’s false.’

First, I’m not sure The Times or any other media outlet has any influence in the section office.

Second, while it’s a shame that athletes who might have ignorantly followed their coach’s direction won’t be allowed to participate, they nevertheless enjoyed the competitive advantage of the misdeed. To allow them to participate extends the ‘unfair’ argument down the line; it would be ‘unfair’ for someone to fail to advance if their spot was won by someone who had enjoyed the advantage of practicing during the closed session.

It’s a tough life lesson.

-- Martin Henderson