Neipp, Ellis Victories Aren’t Run of Mill

One victory was predictable and the other came as a shock.

But it was favored Division II champion Andrea Neipp of Highland High and not surprise Division IV winner Sarah Ellis of La Canada who was giddy Saturday at the state cross-country championships at Woodward Park.

Neipp, a senior, clocked 17 minutes 33 seconds over the 5,000-meter course to win the Division II title by 20 seconds over Irvine University sophomore Allyson Marquand.

Ellis, a senior ran 18:01 in the Division IV race to defeat defending Division III champion Elaine Canchola of Nordhoff by 23 seconds and lead the Spartans to a second-place finish behind the Rangers.

Yet Neipp was the one who was laughing and joking with members of Division II team champion Yucaipa after the race while Ellis calmly answered reporters’ questions with little outward emotion.

“I wanted to be state champ bad,” Neipp said. “If you had told me I was going to do that at the start of the season, I wouldn’t have believed you, but in the last three weeks, I started to think that I had a pretty good chance.”

Neipp’s victory was similar to her win in the Southern Section championships last week, when she led the field through the first mile in 5:20 before breaking away from the Marquand-led pack in the second mile. Neipp had an 11-second lead over Marquand at the two-mile mark and nearly doubled that by the finish.

Afterward, she attributed her victory to improved confidence and a sense of purpose that UCLA freshman Kim Mortensen had displayed as a Thousand Oaks senior last year.

“I really looked up to her,” Neipp said. “I saw how much she improved and how mentally tough she was, and that really motivated me to try to do the same thing this year.”

In addition to Neipp, Canyon sophomore Lauren Fleshman and the Ventura girls’ team turned in noteworthy performances in the Division II race.

Fleshman finished sixth in 18:18 after being in 12th place at the mile and eighth at two miles.

Ventura finished fourth, paced by the 21st- and 24th-place finishes of junior Isabel DeJounge (19:04) and Nicole Campbell (19:08). The Cougars tied Dana Hills for third with 124 points, but dropped to fourth because their sixth runner finished lower (110th) than Dana Hills’ (82nd).

The Division IV girls’ race was a tight battle between Ellis, La Canada sophomore Kim Garnic and Southern Section champion Canchola for the first 1 1/2 miles, but Ellis blew the race open approaching the two-mile mark.

“My goal actually was to stay as close to [Canchola] as possible so I could get a good time,” Ellis said. “I don’t think [the win] has registered yet.”

Led by Ellis and Garnic, fourth in 18:33, La Canada gave Nordhoff a scare before the Rangers emerged with a 49-65 victory.

The victory was the second state title in a row for Nordhoff, which won the Division III championship last year. It also made Ken Reeves the winningest coach in the 10-year history of the state meet with eight combined titles in boys’ and girls’ meets.

Nordhoff’s big three of junior Canchola (18:24) and seniors Terrah Chapin (18:34) and Bridie Hatch (19:00) placed second, fifth and 13th. And when seniors Kendra Greene and Yadi Ramirez finished 33rd and 37th in 19:55 and 20:06, the Rangers had their fourth state title in the last seven years, although No. 4 runner Rae Stumbough did not run because of illness.

In other races, senior David Lopez of Hoover fell short in his bid to become the second Tornado runner to win a Division I title, and the Nordhoff boys saw their state championship string snapped at three in the Division IV event.

Lopez had been a favorite since winning the team sweepstakes race in the Mt. San Antonio College Invitational five weeks ago, but he couldn’t keep pace with Fresno’s Michael Kasahun in the final quarter-mile of the race.

“Every time I tried to pass him, he would surge or cut me off,” Lopez said. “I figured the only way I was going to get by him was if I sprinted around him, and I didn’t want to do that until the end of the race.”

Although Lopez (15:20) couldn’t match strides with Kasahun (15:16) at the end, he didn’t seem too disappointed as he dropped his previous best at Woodward Park by more than 30 seconds.

Nordhoff juniors Dusty Herman and Victor Ochoa finished fourth and seventh in 15:49 and 15:57 in the Division IV race, but the Rangers totaled 136 points to place third behind Corona del Mar (122) and Livermore Granada (123).

Danielle Day of Quartz Hill and Jacob Geyer of Palmdale turned in other noteworthy individual performances.

Day placed sixth in the Division I girls’ race with a time of 18:27 and Geyer was 10th in the Division II boys’ event in 15:50.