With About 14,000 Runners, There Will Be Races Galore

About 14,000 cross-country runners from more than 475 teams will descend upon Walnut Friday and Saturday for the 52nd annual Mt. San Antonio College Invitational, the nation’s largest prep invitational.

Friday’s schedule includes 29 races for Divisions III, IV and V. The first race begins at 2 p.m., the last at 6:05.

On Saturday, the boys’ and girls’ team and individual sweepstakes races will highlight a 59-race schedule for Divisions I and II that begins at 7:15 a.m. The last race will go off at 3:21 p.m.

Mt. SAC and its hilly 2.95-mile course will also be the site of the Western regional championships in December.

Nine of the state’s top 10 teams--including top-ranked Belmont, No. 2 Chino Don Lugo and No. 3 Clovis Buchanan--are among the 21 teams entered in the boys’ sweepstakes race, which begins Saturday at 9:30 a.m.

Josh Spiker of Ventura, the defending Southern Section Division I cross-country and 3,200-meter champion, is the favorite in the boys’ individual sweepstakes, which begins at 9:50 a.m.

The girls’ individual sweepstakes race at 10:10 a.m. features: junior Sara Bei of Santa Rosa Montgomery, the defending Mt. SAC and West regional champion who finished third at last year’s national championships; junior Anita Siraki of Glendale Hoover, who finished fourth in the state last year; senior Valerie Flores of San Pedro, the defending City Section champion who finished sixth in the state last year; senior Abby Miller of Henderson Green Valley (Nev.), third in the 1996 national championships as a freshman; and senior Jamie Witt of Folsom, the defending Division II state champion.

In the girls’ team sweepstakes at 10:30, Palos Verdes Peninsula, the state’s top-ranked team, will try to fend off No. 3 Rialto, No. 4 Yucaipa and University High of San Francisco, the three-time defending state Division V champion which won the Mt. SAC sweepstakes race last year.