Siraki Plans to Take Regional in Stride

The calm before the storm.

That’s the best way to describe the girls’ race in today’s West region cross-country championships at Mt. San Antonio College in Walnut.

Seniors Anita Siraki of Hoover High and Alicia Craig of Campbell County (Wyo.), who finished fourth and third, respectively, in the national championships last year, are co-favorites after setting a slew of course records and posting several runaway victories against elite fields.

Neither Siraki nor Craig is expected to run all-out today, however, as the top eight finishers in the girls’ and boys’ races qualify for the national championships in Lake Buena Vista, Fla., next Saturday.

“I’m just going to run to qualify,” Siraki said after winning her second consecutive state Division I title at Woodward Park in Fresno last Saturday.

“We’re just looking for a nice, solid, even performance,” Coach Greg Switzer of Hoover said. “We don’t want Anita to make any big surges during the race.”

Siraki, the top-ranked 3,200-meter runner in the nation during track season, slashed 17 seconds off the previous course record at Mt. SAC with a 16:38 clocking over the 2.95-mile layout six weeks ago. But Switzer would be surprised if Siraki, defending West region champion Craig or anyone else challenged that time today.

“I think [Siraki] will run in the 16:40s,” Switzer said. “But I can’t see her running faster than that.”

This is the third consecutive year that the West region championships have been held at Mt. SAC, but it is the first time the meet will be contested over the traditional course used for the Mt. SAC Invitational and the Southern Section preliminaries and championships.

The 1998 and ’99 West regionals were contested over a 5,000-meter course that finished on the Mt. SAC track, but construction of a new track forced the switch to the traditional layout this year.

Senior Sara Bei of Santa Rosa Montgomery, the 1998 West region champion, is another girls’ contender because her winning time in the state Division II race was only 14 seconds slower than Siraki’s mark in the Division I final.

Fourteen seconds might seem like a lot, but it’s 16 seconds closer than anyone has finished to Siraki in a race this season.

Seniors Natalie Stein of North Hollywood and Laura Jakosky of Agoura, and freshman Lindsey Owen of Nordhoff are also entered.

Stein, fifth in the state Division I final, finished 22nd in the West region championships last year.

Jakosky, sixth in the state Division II final, placed 44th.

Owen won the state Division III title last Saturday with a time that was more than 20 seconds faster than Stein and Jakosky ran in their races.

Senior Ryan Hall of Big Bear is favored to win the boys’ race, which includes Tom Kubler of Viewpoint and Mark Nevers of Oak Park.

Hall is regarded as a national-title contender after running 8:58.6 for two miles on Oct. 27, setting a Mt. SAC course record of 14:28 in the Southern Section Division IV final on Nov. 18 and winning his second consecutive state title.

Kubler, a senior, won his second consecutive Southern Section Division V title with a 15:07 clocking two weeks ago and placed 12th in the West regional last year.

An illness kept Nevers out of last year’s meet, but the Oak Park senior finished second to Hall--albeit 38 seconds behind him--in the state championships.

The high school portion of the meet will start at 8:15 a.m. with the first of two junior girls’ races. The seeded girls’ race will start at 10:15, with the seeded boys’ race at 10:45.