Tiebreaker Turns Into Heartbreaker

A few fleeting seconds in Saturday’s City Section cross-country championships kept Birmingham High Coach Scott King from taking both his teams to the state championships Nov. 30 in Fresno.

Ali Benmohamed of Monroe took the boys’ title in 15 minutes 28 seconds on the three-mile course at Pierce College, with Manuel Lopez of Belmont second at 15:42.

Birmingham sophomore Tiffany Burgess won the girls’ title in 19:03, over Tamar Gamliel (19:16) of girls’ champion El Camino Real.

Birmingham’s boys scored 82 points, finishing second to defending champion Belmont’s 65. All five of the Sentinels’ scoring runners finished in the top 25 for first-year Coach Everardo Silva, giving Belmont its 12th title in 15 years.

El Camino Real’s girls had two top-10 finishers--Gamliel and freshman Daquita Bailey, who finished fourth at 19:29 but was moved to third when Cleveland freshman Jamie Jones (19:25) was disqualified because she cut a corner. The 68 points were good enough for El Camino’s first title.

Birmingham and Bell tied for second with 87 points each. The top two teams advanced to the state meet, and the non-scoring sixth runner was the tiebreaker.

No. 6 Laura Curiel was 42nd in 21:29 for the Eagles. Birmingham’s Nuria Vanegas clocked 21:30 in 43rd place, and Shirley Cruz was 44th for the Braves in 21:31.

“We really lost all concept of running in a pack, even though we knew it was the only way we can run well,” King said of his girls’ team, adding that the Braves “didn’t attack” in the last mile.

The Braves beat the Conquistadores twice at Pierce, but El Camino turned the tables in last week’s City Section preliminaries.

“We thought that they were playing some kind of game with us last week,” Gamliel said.

Kennedy’s Bree Akesson faded to 24th in 20:34 in the girls’ race, and North Hollywood’s Paul Muite was a disappointing 15th in 16:35 among the boys.

Akesson led at the midway point and Muite was third coming into the final half-mile.

Burgess said part of her strategy was to stay with Akesson and surge past her at least twice in the first mile as a psychological ploy.

Taft’s David Friedman (fifth place, 16:21), North Hollywood’s Raul Correa (sixth place, 16:21) and Maria Herrera (seventh place, 19:39), and Reseda’s Princess Acacio (eighth place, 19:40) advanced to the state meet.

Defending girls’ champion Jamie Newman of El Camino Real, who nursed injuries all season, placed 27th in 20:36.