Naturally, Hess Kicks at Finish

Junior Kelley Hess of Thousand Oaks High won the 1997 Marmonte League cross-country title, placed ninth in the 1998 Southern Section Division I final and won the large schools race of the Clovis Invitational at Woodward Park in Fresno on Saturday, but doesn’t consider herself a true distance runner.

A good distance runner?

Yes.

But not a true distance runner.

“I’m a soccer player first,” Hess said. “I absolutely enjoy running a lot, but my heart is in soccer.”

Soccer is the sport Hess began playing when she was 7 and it’s the one in which she hopes to earn a scholarship to a NCAA Division I school.

Cross-country is a sport that she didn’t compete in until her freshman year at Thousand Oaks.

“I started cross-country on a whim,” said Hess, who had run some 5K road races when she was younger. “I didn’t know how good I would be or how bad I would be, but I figured that either way it would get me in shape for soccer.”

It didn’t take long for Hess--who plays soccer at the high school and club levels--to make an impact in cross-country.

She was Thousand Oaks’ No. 1 or 2 runner for most of her freshman season and upset Jaclyn Pedersen of Royal for the Marmonte League title before finishing 12th in the Southern Section Division I final.

She finished third behind Pedersen and Laura Jakosky of Agoura in the Marmonte League final last year, but improved to ninth in the Southern Section meet and finished 23rd in the state Division I championships at Woodward Park.

She began this season by winning the junior race in the Seaside Park Invitational at the Ventura County Fairgrounds on Sept. 10, but was beaten soundly by Jakosky in the large schools race of the Ojai Invitational at Lake Casitas on Sept. 18 and in a double-dual meet against Westlake and Agoura on Sept. 30.

Hess’ confidence was rattled by a whopping 48-second loss to Jakosky in their second meeting, but she rebounded to place eighth in the Division I race of the Stanford Invitational with a 19:24 clocking over the 5,000-meter distance.

The time was 29 seconds faster than she ran over the same course as a sophomore and she followed with victories against Moorpark last Thursday and in the Clovis Invitational on Saturday.

“She had a very good race at Stanford,” Coach Robert Radnoti of Thousand Oaks said. “That’s when I saw her confidence get a boost.”

Although the Stanford race got Hess “where I wanted to be,” she knows that her devotion to soccer will make winning another league title difficult.

“I would love to be league champion again,” she said. “But that’s not going to be easy because I think Laura [Jakosky] is more dedicated to running than I am. . . . I love the thrill of finishing a race and running a [personal record], but the feeling you get from scoring the winning goal in a big match is just exhilarating.”

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It would be easy to assume the Agoura boys ran poorly in a 26-29 upset loss to Newbury Park in a Marmonte League double-dual meet last Thursday, but that’s not what happened.

The Chargers were simply beaten by a better team that day.

“We didn’t run badly,” Coach Bill Duley of Agoura said. “We actually had a faster team time than we did [in victories over Thousand Oaks and Westlake the previous week]. But they ran well. They deserved to beat us.”

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It sure is nice to have depth.

Just ask Joe and Sheryl Snyder, the husband and wife coaching tandem at Westlake.

The Warriors ran without three of their top seven girls in the Central Park Invitational in Huntington Beach on Saturday, but finished third behind La Jolla and Chula Vista in the Division II race.

Seniors Katie London and Kristine Smith were taking the Scholastic Assessment Test and freshman Laurie Schakett was playing club soccer, but sophomores Kristen Anderson and Michala Brook paced the Warriors to a 71-point total behind La Jolla (38) and Chula Vista (64).

Anderson placed third in 19:18 over the three-mile course and Brook was eighth in 19:43.

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If times from City Section meets last week at Pierce College seemed unusually fast, it’s because the 2.9 or three-mile course--the distance varies depending on whom you ask--was shortened by about three-tenths of a mile because of construction.

With pipe being laid near the standard finish area, meet officials cut the aptly-named “Pukes Peak” from the course.

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The Top 10

Rankings of region cross-country teams

BOYS

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RK LW School (League) 1 1 Oak Park (Tri-Valley) 2 2 Canyon (Foothill) 3 4 Ventura (Channel) 4 5 Burroughs (Foothill) 5 6 Nordhoff (Frontier) 6 3 Agoura (Marmonte) 7 8 Camarillo (Pacific View) 8 9 Buena (Channel) 9 NR Newbury Park (Marmonte) 10 10 Saugus (Foothill)

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GIRLS

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RK LW School (League) 1 1 La Canada (Rio Hondo) 2 2 Westlake (Marmonte) 3 3 Nordhoff (Frontier) 4 4 Agoura (Marmonte) 5 5 Quartz Hill (Golden) 6 6 Louisville (Mission) 7 7 Ventura (Channel) 8 8 Canyon (Foothill) 9 9 Hart (Foothill) 10 10 Thousand Oaks (Marmonte)

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