Hart Runs Out of Luck at 13

One small dynasty continued and a major one bit the dust Thursday in the Foothill League cross-country finals at College of the Canyons.

The Canyon High girls’ team, paced by individual winner Lauren Fleshman, won its third consecutive league title and Burbank, led by boys’ champion Tim Leahy, snapped Hart’s league title streak at 13 with a runaway victory.

Fleshman finished second to Breanne Schweitzer of Saugus in the league final last year, but the Cowboy sophomore dominated the race this time.

She defeated Schweitzer, a senior, by 41 seconds with a time of 19 minutes 4 seconds over the dusty, wind-swept three-mile course.

It was the third quality race in a row for Fleshman, who was slowed by stomach cramps in the middle of the season and ran 20:09 over the same course in the second league meet of the season three weeks ago.

“I felt great,” she said. “I just wanted to stay with Breanne for the first mile and then try to break it open sometime after that. . . .

“She had said she was going to go out hard because she didn’t feel she had a good kick so I just tried to stay with her for the first mile.”

The strong winds, which blew in the runners’ faces for the first 1 1/2 miles, led to a relatively slow first mile of 6:35 as Schweitzer, Fleshman and Canyon senior Julie Harris paced the field.

Fleshman and Schweitzer pulled away from Harris shortly thereafter as the course made its way alongside northbound Highway 5 and Fleshman broke away from Schweitzer on the aptly named Killer Hill at the 1 3/4-mile mark.

“I just took off up that hill,” Fleshman said. “I sprinted up it, but I was still surprised at how fast I ran.”

The race for first was over after that as Fleshman widened her margin all the way to the finish.

Harris, slowed by a cramp in her side, finished third in 20:12 and freshman teammate Erin White placed fifth in 20:52 as defending State Division I champion Canyon totaled 31 points.

Saugus was second with 42 points and Hart finished third with 47.

The top three teams in each race advance to the Southern Section preliminaries at Mt. San Antonio College on Nov. 16.

For the first time in at least 14 years, the Hart boys’ team will not be running in the section preliminaries after the Indians placed fourth with 72 points.

Burbank, which tied Hart for the league title last year, placed five runners among the top 11 finishers to total 36 points. Canyon was second with 62 points and Saugus took third with 63.

Burbank’s victory was expected, but Coach Cal Linam was still ecstatic about winning the outright league title.

“You’re always happy to win,” Linam said. “But I think it’ll sink in more in the next two or three days at school when people start congratulating the guys. . . .

“This is a really big win for guys like Tim Leahy and Jeremy Yaeger, who have been here for four years and can remember when Hart had teams that were untouchable.”

Leahy led the boys’ race through the first mile in 5:15 and finished in 16:25, 30 seconds ahead of runner-up Chris Davis of Hart.

Scott Swan was fifth in 17:06 for Burbank and teammates Yaeger (17:31), David Valdez (17:37) and Azael Gonzalez (17:37) finished ninth through 11th.

“This was a good race for us,” Linam said. “But I feel like there is still a lot of room for improvement.

“We’ve got a lot of guys on this team who came over from other sports and they’re just starting to get in really good running shape, so we could improve a lot in the next couple of weeks.”