Dana Hills Girls Repeat Themselves With Title

The weather was sunny at the 30th annual Orange County Cross-Country Championships, but it reigned blue and white all over the girls’ seeded competition.

Dana Hills edged the county’s top-ranked team, Esperanza, 74-75, for the team title Saturday at Irvine Regional Park. In last year’s meet, Dana Hills won the title in dominating fashion, so Saturday the Dolphins became the first team to repeat as champions since Irvine in 1992.

“It’s hard to come back as the defending champs,” Dana Hills Coach Glenn Forster said. “But the girls ran their hearts out today.”

Sydney Leonard (18 minutes, 27 seconds) and Christa Fitzgerald (18:28), who finished third and fourth, respectively, were the keys for Dana Hills.

“I ran with [Leonard] on Wednesday [in a dual-meet victory over Mater Dei] for the first time,” Fitzgerald said. “So I figured why not do it again today.”

Repeat performances were the order of the day, as University sophomore Allyson Marquand won for the second year in a row.

Marquand, The Times 1995 Runner of the Year, pulled away from Santa Margarita senior Katie Nuanes over the final mile to preserve her second title. Nuanes finished second.

“I knew if we were together near the end she would probably outkick me, so I wanted to get ahead of her during the last mile,” Marquand said.

Heather Garritson of Buena Park had the third best time in 18:20, winning the gold division title. Laguna Hills’ Brooke Thomas finished second in 18:30.

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Mission Viejo’s Marc Gleason threw conventional wisdom out the window and let his legs do the talking in winning the boys’ seeded competition.

Many of his competitors had pre-race plans, but Gleason just let the race unfold. The lack of strategy paid off, beating Nick Russell of Orange by eight seconds. Gleason finished in 15:05.

“There was no game plan,” Gleason said. “There were just so many guys who could’ve won it today.”

Gleason, a junior, took command from the opening gun. Gleason ran alone the entire 3.05-mile course, making the rest of the field work to close the gap on him.

“If I started worrying about [Russell], I wouldn’t have won, so I didn’t look back,” Gleason.

The Tustin boys’ team won the team title, edging second-place Santa Ana Valley, 98-103. Santa Ana (116) finished third and El Toro (134) fourth.

Sophomore Leo Gordillo led the Tillers with a seventh-place finish in 15:34, 14 seconds ahead of teammate Daniel Smith, who was 11th.

“The one thing you tell your kids is it’s about the team,” said Tom Coffey, in his 24th year as Tustin coach. “‘As you become older as a coach, you realize that is really important.”

Cross-country notes

Irvine finished third in the girls’ seeded race with 128 points, just ahead of El Modena (133) and University (136). . . . Woodbridge won the Gold Division team title, scoring 110 points, only four more than Foothill. . . . Marie Leyrer of Villa Park ran 19:03 to win the Silver Division, but Katella (79 points) finished first. . . . Bernice Carbajal (19:26) won the Bronze Division race and led Rancho Alamitos (41 points) to the team title.

In the boys’ competition, Santa Ana finished third, and Danny Lee’s third-place finish helped El Toro to fourth. . . . Huntington Beach’s Dan Gaston and Tony Trueba finished sixth and eighth in the seeded race, running 15:31 and 15:35 respectively. . . . Foothill’s John Kuehn won the Gold Division title in 15:52, leading the Knights to the team title. . . . University junior Martin Brix won the Silver Division title in 15:48 . . . St. Margaret’s junior Ryan Downey won the Bronze Division title in 16:05. Villa Park won the team title.