Arce Shows Staub Invitational No-Shows : High school cross-country: Palmdale junior paces Falcon victory as two schools hold out best runners.

While two of the Southern Section’s top cross-country teams opted not to field their best runners for Saturday’s Kenny Staub Invitational at Crescenta Valley Park, Antonio Arce and the Palmdale boys’ squad happily took center stage.

Paced by Arce’s victory, the Falcons won the Division I title with 41 points. Agoura and Canyon were next with 88 points, but the Chargers were awarded second place in a tiebreaker because they had a higher-finishing sixth runner.

“This was a good race for us,” Palmdale Coach Rob Fairley said. “It was important that we run well. We ran a much smarter race today than we did last week. We didn’t go out and blaze the first mile. We sat back a little more and paced ourselves.”

Palmdale, the seventh-ranked team in Southern Section Division I, went out too fast in the opening mile of last week’s Stanford Invitational--several Falcon runners came through in 4 minutes 45 seconds or faster--before finishing a disappointing eighth.

Arce and sophomore teammate Marcus Castro were among the lead pack Saturday that included Agoura’s John Greene, Canyon’s Jon Bischop and St. Francis’ Kevin Koeper, but the first mile was passed in a less-taxing 5:03.

Greene made a break from the pack shortly thereafter and fellow junior Arce was the only one who could keep pace with him.

“I was trying to pass him all around the course,” Arce said, “but he kept holding me off.”

Greene opened a five-meter advantage over Arce on the last uphill portion of the course, but Arce made up that deficit in the race’s final 150 meters, which was downhill.

Arce, a 5-foot-7, 110-pound junior, timed 15:42 over the three-mile course with Greene a second behind.

“I felt really confident in my kick,” Arce said. “I felt real good all through the race so I didn’t worry when he got ahead of me.”

Castro ran 16:02 with Bischop (16:03) and Koeper (16:05) fourth and fifth.

Chris Bennington (ninth in 16:26), Louie Alvarez (11th in 16:38) and Roy Johnston (17th in 16:47) rounded out Palmdale’s top five runners.

Hart and Peninsula, which finished ahead of Palmdale at Stanford, were expected to battle Palmdale in the Staub meet, but both teams rested their top runners.

The girls’ Division I race was also hurt by no-shows as Agoura did not have a full team, and Peninsula and Hart entered B teams.

Agoura, the three-time defending state Division I champion, was without six of its top eight runners, who missed the meet because of flu or to take the Scholastic Aptitude Test.

Saugus defeated Simi Valley, 25-44, in the absence of the big three teams.

Shelly Burkert led the Centurions with a first-place time of 19:59 over the three-mile course as Saugus placed five runners among the top eight finishers.

In other races, Canyon won the girls’ Division II title behind the one-two finish of Ann Koscki (19:47) and Kellie Stigile (19:57) and Hoover’s David Lopez won the boys’ Division I frosh-soph race with a time of 16:24, which tied the meet record for that class.