CROSS-COUNTRY CHAMPIONSHIPS : JUNIOR COLLEGE / STATE MEET : Easy Win Fulfills Expectations of Antelope Valley’s Harvey

Jean Harvey of Antelope Valley College can finally rest easy.

All week long, friends and classmates told Harvey that she was going to win the state junior college title. And all week long, Coach Mark Covert told anyone who would listen that although Harvey had become the favorite after winning last week’s Southern California regional by nearly 31 seconds, she was not unbeatable.

“Winning Southern Cals was nice,” Covert said Tuesday. “But you can’t win the state meet at the Southern Cals.”

So Harvey went out and won the state meet Saturday, timing 17 minutes 16 seconds over the three-mile course at Sierra College. The sophomore from Paraclete High finished 24 seconds ahead of runner-up Jennifer Cleary of Foothill.

The win was the sixth in a row for Harvey and made her the first Antelope Valley runner to win a state cross-country title.

“It feels great,” Harvey said. “I’ve been waiting for this for a long time. When I placed seventh (in the state meet) last year, I thought, ‘You can win this thing next year.’ ”

The Glendale women, paced by Grace Padilla with a fifth-place effort, finished a surprising third in the team standings with 104 points. Mt. San Antonio and Irvine Valley tied for first with 82 points. West Valley placed fourth with 105 points and Moorpark--led by Deana Fuess in eighth place--finished fifth in the 10-team field with 128.

Glendale teammates Hugo Allan Garcia and Robert Nelson finished eighth and 10th, respectively, to lead the Vaqueros to a fourth-place finish in the men’s race.

Riverside teammates and Zimbabwean countrymen Passmore Furusa and Gray Mavhera finished first (19:34 over the four-mile course) and second (19:35) in the men’s race to lead the Tigers to the team title with 34 points. Defending champion Long Beach City was second with 65 points, followed by El Camino (86), Glendale (89) and San Diego Mesa (107).

Padilla pushed the pace in the women’s race from the gun, opening a 20-yard lead after the first half-mile, but Harvey trimmed Padilla’s lead to two seconds at the mile mark (5:19 to 5:21), then took control at the midway point when she surged up a hill.

“That six- or seven-minute portion of the course is where we thought the race would be won or lost,” Covert said.

At two miles (11:09), Harvey’s lead had grown to 22 seconds over Marisol Cossio of L.A. City; Padilla was another two seconds back. Cossio finished third in 17:43, followed by Suzanne Castruita of Mt. SAC (17:54) and Padilla (17:57).

“A year’s worth of work went into this,” Harvey said. “I was really nervous earlier in the week because everyone kept telling me, ‘You’re going to win.’ But that’s easier said than done.”

Covert, who won the 1968 state title as a Valley freshman, has coached three individual state titlists, including Harvey. The others were 1974 small-schools champion Bobby Thomas of Glendale and 1984 winner Benny Cruz of Valley.

Garcia ran his best race of the season in the men’s event, but the defending state champion was unable to keep pace with the leaders in the last mile and finished eighth in 20:05.

Nelson timed 20:13, Ventura’s Jorge Barajas was 14th in 20:17 and Glendale’s Obed Aguirre finished 16th in 20:19.