Top Eight Is the Key in Fresno

Can Lauren Fleshman of Canyon High duplicate her performance from the state cross-country championships Saturday?

How will Elaine Canchola of Nordhoff react when she’s part of the pack instead of leading it as she did in 12 previous races this season?

Those questions will be answered this afternoon when the West regional championships are held at Woodward Park in Fresno.

The top eight finishers in the girls’ and boys’ races will comprise the West region team for the national championships at Lake Buena Vista, Fla., on Dec. 13.

The girls’ seeded race will start at 1:45 p.m. with the boys’ at 2:30.

Fleshman, a junior who finished 19th in the West regional last year, appears to have an excellent chance of finishing in the top eight if she can match her 17:54 clocking that placed her second in the state Division I final at Woodward Park last week.

It has been six years since a girl broke 18 minutes in the West regional and failed to place among the top eight finishers. “I’m pretty excited,” Fleshman said. “I want to see how [the race] is going to turn out. I feel like I’ve got nothing to lose.”

The same thing cannot be said about Canchola, a senior who burst onto the national scene when she finished second in the 1994 West regional as a freshman in her first competitive cross-country season.

Canchola placed fourth in the 1995 West regional, but didn’t run in the meet last year.

She ran a relaxed-looking 18:19 to win the state Division IV title last week, but today will be the first time this season that she has faced runners such as Trina Cox of Santa Rosa, Fleshman and Kimi Welsh of Yucaipa, each of whom broke 18 minutes while finishing 1-2-3 in the state Division I final.

Those time differences will be quickly forgotten if Canchola finishes among the top eight today. But if she doesn’t, there will be speculation that all her runaway victories didn’t prepare her properly to compete at the elite level.

If the region’s top runners are going to contend for a top-eight finish in the boys’ race, they’ll have to run substantially faster than they did in the state championships.

Senior Isabel Casillas of Hoover had the fastest time among area competitors in the state meet with a 15:44 clocking that placed him eighth in the Division I race. But it’ll probably take a time in the 15:15-15:20 range--if the course is in good condition--to finish among the top eight today.

Senior Dusty Herman of Nordhoff is the region’s highest-finishing returning runner based on his 19th-place finish from last year.

Herman finished fourth in the state Division IV final last week while senior teammates Victor Ochoa and Matthew Torres placed second and third.