Occidental Men, Women Step to Fore in Cross-Country

Occidental College cross-country runner Marcial Beltran took his victory at the Southern California Intercollegiate Athletic Assn. championships at La Mirada Park in stride Saturday.

Albeit a cautious stride.

Despite nursing a strained hamstring sustained two weeks ago in the Cal Poly San Luis Obispo Invitational, Beltran led an Occidental sweep of the first four places. The Tigers placed five runners among the top nine to score 19 points and capture their eighth SCIAC title in the past nine seasons.

Pomona-Pitzer and Whittier tied for second with 81 points, followed by Claremont-Mudd (84), Redlands (100) and Caltech (140).

Beltran, a junior transfer from Fullerton College who holds the national junior college record in the marathon, toured the five-mile course in 25 minutes 25 seconds.

Jose Garcia (25:36), Konstantine Kindreich (25:37) and Emmet Hogan (25:40) placed second, third and fourth. Mike Anker (26:41) finished ninth to round out the Occidental scoring.

In the women’s competition, Occidental, paced by Laurie Schuster’s second-place finish, also placed five runners among the top nine to win its second conference title in three seasons. The Tiger women scored 25 points.

Pomona-Pitzer was second with 35 points, followed by Whittier (83), Claremont-Mudd (91), and Caltech (153).

Schuster covered the 5,000-meter course in 18:41 and teammates Becky Kopchik (19:00), Nancy McKrell (19:37), Andrea Karamitsos (19:56) and Jeanise Eisenman (20:11) placed third, fourth, seventh and ninth, respectively.

Pomona-Pitzer’s Kelly Redfield won the race in 18:26.

Brian Barnes of Redlands led through the early stages of the men’s race until Beltran, Garcia, Kindreich and Hogan broke away slightly more than three miles into the race.

Barnes finished fifth in 25:51.

“I needed time for my hamstring to warm up,” said Beltran, who finished the season undefeated in conference competition. “It is still sore and I didn’t want to run hard in the beginning. The team tried to run together.

“It wasn’t an easy race, but I didn’t have to run all-out. There weren’t any challengers today. I’m trying to peak for nationals.”

Occidental will move on to the NCAA Division III Far West regional Nov. 10 at Bonelli Park in San Dimas. The top two men’s teams and the top women’s team in that meet will advance to the nationals Nov. 17 in Grinnell, Iowa.

Schuster tried a different approach than Beltran in the women’s race, but the strategy backfired as Redfield handed Schuster her first conference loss in two seasons.

Schuster, the SCIAC champion as a junior last season, bolted to a 25-meter lead 800 meters into the race but was overtaken by Redfield at the two-mile point.

“It was just a bad race,” said Schuster, who beat Redfield, 18:11 to 18:35, at San Luis Obispo.

“I didn’t take off harder than I usually do. I just felt tired and experienced a lot of muscle soreness during the race,” Schuster said. “I was training through this race, but I expected to do better than I did.”