PREP CROSS-COUNTRY / MT. SAC INVITATIONAL : Trabuco Hills Girls Grab Some Attention

The Trabuco Hills girls’ cross-country team earned some long-awaited respect Saturday at the Mt. San Antonio Invitational.

Competing against some of the nation’s elite runners, the Mustangs finished second in the team sweepstakes race, scoring 172 points, behind Thousand Oaks (65), which is ranked 15th nationally by Harrier magazine, and ahead of county foes El Toro (173) and Irvine (181).

“My feet aren’t touching the ground right now,” said an ecstatic Trabuco Hills Coach Jack Recla. “Our whole goal is to make it to State. . . . Maybe this year we’ll get it together.”

The Mustangs, ranked seventh in the county, were overlooked for the sweepstakes race in last week’s county championships, which included 12 of the county’s top teams. That denial worked as perfect motivation on Saturday.

“I don’t care about rankings, but the girls look at them,” Recla said. “They wonder why we don’t get any respect . . . even though we keep winning.”

Thousand Oaks junior Kim Mortensen ran 18 minutes 24 seconds to take top honors, but it was the pack of Peggy Hall (14th in 19:28), Megan MacLeod (23rd in 19:51) and Melissa Keenan (26th in 19:58) that enabled the Mustangs to hold off the county’s two top-ranked teams.

Irvine, which won the county championship last week and is ranked first in the latest sportswriters poll, was led by junior Jessica Corbin, who ran with the leaders in the first mile of the three-mile course before fading to a seventh-place finish.

“My style this year has been to kind of lay back and then make up ground in the end, but that hasn’t worked so I just tried to go out a little harder,” said Corbin, who ran 19:05 for the Vaqueros.

Los Alamitos freshman Kim Bates turned in the day’s fastest time for a county runner, finishing fourth in 18:45 to lead the Griffins to a sixth-place team finish (199 points).

“I did a lot better than I thought I would,” said Bates, who ran the hilly course for the first time Saturday. “I wanted to run well because this is the biggest invitational that we’ve run in this year.”

Santa Rosa sophomore Julia Stamps stole the show, taking the lead in the individual sweepstakes 100 meters into the race and never looking back. She finished in 16:58, breaking the two-year-old course record of 17:15 set by Fallbrook’s Milena Glusac.

“I just made sure that I went hard on the downhill and maintained on the flat,” Stamps said.

San Clemente senior Nancy Dollar finished fourth in the same race (18:56).

In the boys’ competition, Capistrano Valley standout Adalberto Sanchez was the lone area athlete to break 16:00, winning his race in the early Division I race in 15:25.

Sanchez, the county champion last week, beat Redlands’ Tedros Berhane by more than 40 seconds to lead the Cougars to a second-place finish (107 points) behind Madera (62).

The Dana Hills boys’ and girls’ squads were winners.

The girls, ranked fifth in the county, were led by sophomore Sidney Leonard, who ran 19:07 for second place. The Dolphins scored 102 points, finishing ahead of Arroyo Grande (115) for the Division I title.

Robby Tuttle paced the Dolphin boys (51 points) ahead of Fresno (71), finishing in second place in the late Division I race (16:13).

Notes

The Dana Hills girls’ team had the fastest team-time (combination of top five runners’ times), running 100 minutes 28 seconds, ahead of Irvine (100:39), Trabuco Hills (100:48) and Los Alamitos (101:06). . . . Santa Ana Valley senior Joel Orozco finished 20th in 16:00 in the team sweepstakes race, leading the Falcons to a 12th-place finish. . . . El Toro’s Martin Pennell appears fully recovered from an Aug. 26 car crash, finishing fifth (16:19) in the Division I varsity race. . . . Garrett Jensen of Sunny Hills ran away from the competition in the Division II race, running 16:17. . . . Troy’s Elizabeth Sinclair ran 19:29 to win the Division II race. . . . Los Alamitos’ Steve Wucetich (16:18) finished second in the Division II race.