Thousand Oaks Doubles Up on Rest of Marmonte League

Thousand Oaks High continued a roll that started two weeks ago by winning the boys’ and girls’ races in the Marmonte League cross-country finals at Agoura High on Thursday.

The Lancers struggled--by their standards--during the first six weeks of the season, but they suddenly hit their stride on Oct. 20 with runaway victories over Newbury Park and Royal in a meet at Waverly Park in Thousand Oaks.

“That was a huge race for us,” senior Seth Neumuller of Thousand Oaks said. “Our confidence was running a little low during the early part of the season, but when we ran like we did, we felt the season changing right there.”

Neumuller won his second consecutive individual title Thursday to lead the Lancers to their third team championship in a row.

Thousand Oaks totaled 36 points, followed by Agoura with 60, Newbury Park with 74 and Westlake with 90.

Neumuller clocked 16:01 over the three-mile course to defeat senior Richard Chetwynd of Simi Valley by seven seconds.

“I was trying to relax as much as possible,” Neumuller said of the last mile. “I was just trying to relax and bring it on home.”

Sophomore Mike Krestyn of Thousand Oaks was third in 16:13, with senior Jon Vella sixth in 16:29, senior Ryan Broms ninth in 16:36 and sophomore Chris Deonier 20th in 17:05 for the Lancers.

In the girls’ meet, five-time defending league champion Thousand Oaks defeated Westlake, 58-64. But Westlake won its first overall league title since 1983 because the Warriors were 6-0 in dual meets and Thousand Oaks was 4-2.

Royal was third with 73 points and Agoura was fourth with 98.

Junior Kelley Hess paced Thousand Oaks, the No. 8-ranked team in the Southern Section Division I poll, with a second-place time of 18:43. Sophomore Ashley Patteson was sixth in 19:28 for the Lancers and freshman Ginger Taylor was 13th in 20:15.

Sophomore Kristen Anderson paced Westlake with a fifth-place time of 19:11.

Junior Laura Jakosky of Agoura placed first in 18:12 after bolting away from the pack 4 1/2 minutes into the race.

“I just thought, ‘OK, I’ll go now,’ ” Jakosky said after posting her eighth victory in nine meets. “I wanted to run as hard as I could from that point on.”

The top three teams in each race advanced to the Southern Section preliminaries at Mt. San Antonio College on Nov. 13, as did any individual among the top six finishers, but not on a qualifying team.