Garcia Calmly Runs Away With State Title : Cross-country: Glendale runner makes break after two-mile mark to win junior college race.

He was the favorite. He was battling the flu and he had a small band of rabid supporters--complete with a three-by-six-foot Guatemalan flag.

But was Hugo Allan Garcia nervous?

Not a chance.

Garcia, of Glendale College, won the state junior college cross-country individual championship Saturday at Mt. San Antonio College with a time of 19 minutes 25 seconds over the four-mile course.

“I know that if I am prepared for this race, then I should be relaxed,” Garcia said after the race. “There was no reason to worry if I have trained properly.”

Judging by his performance, Garcia made all the necessary preparations. And he had all the right moves during the race.

He broke away from Oscar Gonzalez of Long Beach City College and Peter Woods of Hancock shortly after the two-mile mark, reached in 9:16, and was never challenged.

Garcia, a native of Guatemala, became Glendale’s first state champion since Jeff Nelson won the small-schools race in 1980. Garcia ran 24 seconds faster on the four-mile course than he had in winning the Mt. SAC Invitational in October.

Gonzalez finished second in 19:35 and Woods placed third in 19:40. Edgar Montes of Mt. SAC, who dealt Garcia his only loss of the season at the Irvine Invitational, was fourth in 19:54.

“I felt very weak in my legs and my chest,” said Garcia, who won nine of 10 races this season. “I suffered throughout the course. It was a very hard race.”

Despite Garcia’s win and Obed Aguirre’s seventh-place finish (20:19), Glendale finished a disappointing sixth in the team standings with 139 points.

Long Beach City placed three runners in the top nine to win with 66 points, followed by defending champion Mt. SAC (71) and El Camino (76). American River and West Valley rounded out the top five with 106 and 108 points, respectively.

In the women’s race, Gina Paramo (second place) of Oxnard and Jean Harvey (seventh) of Antelope Valley were the top area finishers. Moorpark placed fourth in the team standings with 101 points.

El Camino won its first women’s title with 77 points, followed by two-time defending champion Mt. SAC (89), Riverside (92), Moorpark (101) and Orange Coast (109) in the Southern California-dominated race.

Moorpark’s top runner--Leticia Melgoza--finished 22nd in 19:08, but there was only a 59-second gap between the Raiders’ No. 1 and 5 runners. “We ran very well as a group,” Moorpark Coach Mike Stewart said.