PREP CROSS-COUNTRY: MT. SAC INVITATIONAL : Mud Doesn’t Trip Up Love as He Leads Katella to Third

Mt. SAC? Try Mud SAC.

An overnight rain turned every step on the hilly, three-mile cross-country course at the Mt. San Antonio College Invitational into a slippery adventure Saturday.

“I got mud in my eye,” Katella’s Mike Love said after leading the Knights to a third-place finish in the boys’ team sweepstakes race.

He could laugh about it after placing fifth overall in 15 minutes 27 seconds, the fastest time of the day by an Orange County runner.

“At Mt. SAC the conditions are never perfect,” Edison Coach Kristi Kaufmann said after the Chargers finished second in the girls’ team sweepstakes race.

“If it’s not hot, it’s smoggy. If it’s not windy, it’s cold.”

Other than the poor footing, the conditions were ideal for running. The temperature was in the high 60s and the sky was cloudy for much of the morning. It was a far cry from the 90-degree heat that resulted in the hospitalization of six runners at last year’s meet.

Saturday, about 7,500 mud-covered runners from some 400 schools competed. A few tumbled, but the favorites all seemed to keep their feet and ran as fast as ever.

Certainly, the conditions didn’t faze Milena Glusac of Fallbrook, who broke the girls’ course record by one second in winning the team sweepstakes race in 17:15.

And the quagmire didn’t seem to slow Edison, which rebounded from a disappointing second-place finish at the Orange County championships last week to finish second behind Palos Verdes Peninsula. The Chargers scored 102 points to 90 for Peninsula.

Agoura, top-ranked nationally, was third with 108 points and Corona del Mar, which defeated Edison last week to take the county’s No. 1 ranking away from the Chargers, was fourth with 112. Irvine finished fifth with 158.

Edison didn’t have a finisher in the top 10, but the Chargers ran in a tight pack and that was enough to produce one of their finest performances of the season, according to Kaufmann.

“They ran to their strength,” she said. “They ran in a clump. This is definitely encouraging for our team.”

Elyse Homberger, a sophomore, led Edison with an 11th-place finish in 19:13. Jeannie Formosa was 12th in 19:26.

Tracy Clark of Corona del Mar, who moved smartly through the pack to finish third in 18:19, was the county’s top finisher. Irvine’s Kelly Roda was fourth in 18:36.

The boys’ race shaped up as a battle between Hart, top-ranked nationally and in the State Division II, and Madera, No. 2 in the State Division II. But Katella and Thousand Oaks turned out to be major players in a tight race.

In the end, Thousand Oaks won with 98 points with Madera second (114), Katella third (121) and Hart fourth (133).

“It didn’t feel very good,” said Katella’s Love, picking flecks of mud out of his hair and off his arms and legs. “Actually, the team pretty much was running for the experience, to see what we had to do for CIF (Southern Section).”

If Saturday’s meet was any indication, Katella should be favored to win the section’s Division II title Nov. 21 at Mt. SAC. Moreover, the Knights, top-ranked in the county, made a strong case to move up in the State rankings. Coming into the meet, only Mission Bay, which did not compete at Mt. SAC, and Sacramento Jesuit were ranked ahead of the No. 3 Knights in Division II.

Behind Love, Mike Moreno was sixth in 15:28 and Delfino Resendiz was 16th in 15:57.

Jared Overton’s 25th-place finish in 16:09 led Newport Harbor, No. 2 in the county, to ninth place.

Meet Notes

Carrie and James Garritson, standout runners at Buena Park, were denied in another appeal to gain their varsity eligibility at the school. This week, the California Interscholastic Federation upheld an earlier Southern Section ruling that banned the runners from varsity competition. The Garritsons, who transferred from Sunny Hills to Buena Park after James was allegedly threatened and assaulted repeatedly by gang members, were seeking a hardship transfer. Currently eligible to compete on the junior varsity level, they could make a further appeal in the courts.

Ocean View won the girls’ individual sweepstakes race, edging Upland, 86-89. The Seahawks’ team time of 1:39:12 would have put them in fifth place in the team sweepstakes race. . . . La Habra finished fifth and Esperanza sixth in the boys’ individual sweepstakes race. Rowland won the race. Ben Flamm of Huntington Beach was the county’s top finisher in that race, placing seventh in 15:58. Margarito Casillas of Glendale Hoover won in 15:11.