CITY SECTION CROSS-COUNTRY : Arellano’s Win Puts Belmont Back on Top : Championships: Unlikely triumph sets up Sentinels’ eighth title in nine years. Taft finishes second.

A surprising victory by Belmont High’s Rene Arellano in the City Section cross-country championships at Pierce College on Saturday led to a not-too-surprising outcome in the race for the team title.

Arellano won the three-mile race in 14 minutes 58 seconds and Belmont placed five runners among the top 12 to easily win its eighth championship in the past nine seasons.

The Sentinels totaled 32 points; defending champion Taft was second with 115, two points ahead of Garfield.

Monroe (188) and Birmingham (196) were eighth and ninth.

Belmont won its second consecutive girls’ title, placing four runners among the top eight to win with 19 points. San Pedro was a distant second with 108 and Narbonne was third with 134.

El Camino Real tied with Garfield for fourth with 148 points but finished fifth on the basis of a slower sixth runner.

Taft (165), Birmingham (176), Chatsworth (258) and Grant (297) finished sixth, seventh, ninth and 10th.

Belmont, which also won the boys’ sophomore and junior-varsity divisions, became the first school to win girls’ and boys’ City titles in the same season.

The top two teams and the first five individuals not on the top two teams qualified for the state meet Nov. 24 at Woodward Park in Fresno.

University’s Robin Snowbeck powered past Kennedy’s Jennie Armenta on the final downhill stretch of the race to win the girls’ race in 18:40. Armenta was second in 18:47.

North Hollywood’s Oshonda Posey led during the early stages before fading to third in 19:06.

El Camino Real’s Gina Zeno finished ninth, holding off Poly’s Janet Bailon for the fifth individual qualifying berth. Both were timed in 20:06.

Arellano ran in a pack that included pre-meet favorites Steve Gonzales (Carson), Brian Godsey (Taft) and Ben Mesfen (Venice) before breaking away with just under a mile remaining.

“I told myself I was going to go out with them,” said Arellano, who ran 15:33 and finished 24 seconds behind Gonzales in the City preliminaries the previous week.

“They started slowing down and I was kind of afraid when I took the lead. It was a perfect race.”

Gonzales, third last year, finished second in 15:08. Godsey (15:29) edged Mesfen (15:30) for third. Monroe’s Lorenzo Ortiz was ninth in 16:00.

“Unbelievable,” Belmont Coach Gordon Weisenberger said. “I thought we might have a shot at winning the team title, but there was no way that I thought (Arellano) would win the race. He just rose to the occasion.”

Taft did not.

Godsey ran 14 seconds slower than in the preliminaries, and Taft’s five scoring runners ran an average of 28 seconds slower than their best on the Pierce course.

“I just tried to hang back,” said Godsey, who placed fifth last season. “(Gonzales) was making a lot of surges and that took out a lot out of everybody.”

Kipp Ortenburger (16:29) and Torino Carr (16:30) placed 20th and 21st. Chip English (17:16) and Caesar Rodriguez (17:23) finished 42nd and 46th to round out Taft’s scoring.

“I don’t know what happened,” Taft Coach Mel Hein said. “We’ve done the training and we’ve done the sprints. We were prepared, but everybody was off. We were lucky to finish second.”