By Being Well-Heeled, Serrano Joins the Elite

Charlie Serrano of Simi Valley Royal High is such a chatterbox during cross-country practices that teammates and Coach Ryan Luce tell him to be quiet at times.

The Highlander senior is much less verbose, however, when asked to explain his breakthrough performance in the team sweepstakes race of the Mt. San Antonio College Invitational on Saturday.

“I just like that course and I felt like I could run well there,” said Serrano, whose eighth-place time of 15 minutes 27 seconds cut 41 seconds off his previous best over Mt. SAC’s 2.91-mile layout and led Royal to a fifth-place finish in a talent-laden race.

Luce, a Royal alumnus who is in his first season as the Highlanders’ coach, said Serrano was determined to run well Saturday because he was forced to stop and put a shoe back on during a heat of the Southern Section Division I preliminaries at Mt. SAC last November.

Another runner inadvertently stepped on the back of Serrano’s foot during the first mile of the race, leaving his heel exposed. His midrace pit stop took no more than 10 seconds, but cost him valuable places in a race in which he finished 19th.

Worse yet, Royal’s team total of 99 points left the fifth-place Highlanders two points and one place away from advancing to the section championships.

“I was pretty upset about [the shoe],” Serrano said. “Fifty guys must have went passed me when I stopped.”

Serrano has had no such mishaps this season after being slowed by tendinitis in his right knee during track.

Serrano, Tim Hearst and Travis Patterson have given Royal a strong 1-2-3 punch, helped the Highlanders to a No. 7 ranking in the state Division I poll and made them co-favorites with Oak Park in today’s Ventura County championships at Lake Casitas in Ventura.

Playing it safe: Rosemead Bosco Tech was expected to run in the individual sweepstakes at Mt. SAC, but Coach Sal Perez withdrew his team fewer than 48 hours before its race.

“We were just training hard,” he said. “I wanted the guys’ legs to feel more fresh heading into November.”

A weary Tiger squad finished fourth in the state Division III final last year after being the division’s top-ranked team much of the season.

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Asterisk needed: When Canyon Country Canyon won the boys’ team sweepstakes at Mt. SAC, the cumulative time of the Cowboys’ top five runners was 77:07, two seconds faster than the previous record set by Thousand Oaks in the 1994 Southern Section Division I final.

Thousand Oaks posted its time on a course that was about 70 yards longer than the current Mt. SAC layout, however, meaning the Lancers would have run in the 76:15-76:20 range on the shorter course.

The reduction in course length has occurred the last few years because some sharp turns in the first mile of the race have been smoothed out by meet management so they can accommodate larger races.