WESTERN STATE CONFERENCE CROSS-COUNTRY MEET : Wilson Has Ups and Downs, Wins Again

Talk about contrasts.

Midway through the second Western State Conference cross-country meet of the season at College of the Canyons on Friday, Jeff Wilson of Moorpark College appeared to be out for a nice easy training run.

But 10 minutes after winning the race, Wilson was gingerly walking around with a painful grimace on his face.

“It hurts so bad,” Wilson said to one of the meet managers. “(This course) is worse than Mt. (San Antonio College). It’s constantly going up and down. At least Mt. SAC has some flat spots.”

Flat terrain or not, Wilson was never seriously challenged as he ran 21 minutes 35 seconds over the four-mile course to post his fifth victory of the season without a loss.

With Glendale’s Jacques Sallberg out with the flu, Wilson was not expected to be pushed and he wasn’t.

He shared the early lead with Ramon Serratos of Canyons before opening up a four-second advantage after a mile (5:06) and a nine-second gap at two miles (10:34).

“The race started out too fast,” Wilson said. “The first mile was too fast, but when the guy from Canyons took the lead, I figured it was his course and he ought to know how to run it. So I went with him.”

When Serratos--who finished ninth in 23:08--began to fade after the first mile, Wilson found himself in front by himself.

“That scared me at first,” he said. “Other than that, I didn’t give it much thought. I just concentrated on maintaining my pace and getting up and down these hills.”

Glendale freshman Jose Padilla was Wilson’s closest pursuer at two miles, but when Vaquero Coach Eddie Lopez encouraged him to set his sights on Wilson’s fleeing back, Padilla appeared more concerned with trying to hold onto second.

He was unable to do so, but it didn’t hurt Glendale as Nacho Delgado (21:47), Padilla (21:56), Eduardo Macias (22:39) and Adrian Baca (22:42) finished second through fifth for the Vaqueros, the top-ranked team in the state.

Led by those four, Glendale totaled 22 points, followed by Bakersfield (71), Moorpark (79), Santa Barbara City (103) and Canyons (128).

Like Wilson, Josephina Sanchez of Ventura won her second WSC meet of the season and like Glendale, the Pirate women repeated their first-place team showing.

Sanchez, a 1992 graduate of Hueneme High, was a runaway winner in the first WSC meet in San Luis Obispo, but she was pushed to the limit by Canyons’ Heidi Tisovic on Friday.

Sanchez and Glendale’s Tanya Janet led the field through the first mile in 6:10 with Tisovic third at 6:15.

Sanchez broke away from Janet shortly thereafter, however, and she had a 80-yard lead over Tisovic at two miles.

But the heat and the hilly course began to take their toll on Sanchez as Tisovic caught her going up the final hill.

“I was aware she was catching me, but there wasn’t much I could do about it,” Sanchez said. “I was really tired and I was dehydrating bad out there. But I was confident that I could stay with her once she caught me and outkick her at the end.”

Sanchez did exactly that, surging past Tisovic on the final downhill portion of the course to time 20:01 over the three-mile distance.

Tisovic was second in 20:05, followed by Janet (20:31) and Moorpark’s Christine Weigert (20:47).

Ventura’s Barbara Moreno (21:26) and Christy Ruffin (21:31) finished seventh and eighth to help the Pirates turn back Canyons, 49-58.

Glendale finished third with 96 points, followed by Bakersfield (97) and Cuesta (108).

The first two WSC meets of the season each count 25% toward the conference title, with the WSC finals on Nov. 8 worth 50%.