Trafeh Comes Up Short at Nationals

Mohamed Trafeh of Duarte ended his senior cross-country season on a disappointing note Saturday when he finished 11th in the boys’ race in the national championships at Morley Field in San Diego.

Trafeh, a two-time state Division IV champion, placed a surprising seventh in the national championships last year. But he fell short of that performance in the 25th edition of the meet that pits the top eight finishers from the West, Midwest, Northeast and South regions against each other.

Trafeh was in fourth place when he passed the mile mark in 4 minutes 41 seconds but dropped to 11th after two miles.

He moved up to eighth with a mile left in the 5,000-meter race, but lost three spots before finishing in 15:24.

Junior Mark Matusak of Los Angeles Loyola, who was in eighth place after two miles, placed 22nd in 15:41.

Senior Matt Withrow of Tinley Park (Ill.) Andrew High placed first in 14:55 after overtaking leader Shadack Kiptoo of Albuquerque La Cueva with 150 meters left.

“I just didn’t feel good during the race,” Trafeh said after running nine seconds slower than he did in last year’s meet. “It just wasn’t my race. The [early] pace was perfect. I just didn’t have a great race.”

Seniors Lindsay Flacks of North Hollywood Harvard-Westlake finished 24th in 18:36 and Liza Pasciuto of Murrieta Valley was 29th in 19:09 in the girls’ race.

Flacks placed second in the West Region championships at Mt. San Antonio College on Dec. 6, but quickly fell behind the leaders Saturday. Pasciuto, sixth in the West Regional, was slowed by a cold.

Junior Katelyn Kaltenbach of Aurora (Colo.) Smoky Hill High placed first in 17:24 after overtaking freshman Marie Lawrence of Reno in the final 150 meters.

John Ortega

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Tickets for the Dream Classic, featuring five high school boys’ basketball games at UCLA’s Pauley Pavilion on Jan. 3, have gone on sale through Ticketmaster.

Point guard Sebastian Telfair from Brooklyn, N.Y., 6-foot-10 senior Dwight Howard from Atlanta and 7-0 center Robert Swift from Bakersfield are among the players scheduled to participate.

Games start at 2:30 p.m. and conclude with the 8:45 p.m. game between Woodland Hills Taft and Reseda Cleveland.

John Barnes, football coach at Los Alamitos, has been selected as an assistant coach for the U.S. Army All-American Bowl on Jan. 3 at the Alamodome in San Antonio.

Chatsworth High baseball Coach Tom Meusborn was honored recently as the national high school coach of the year by the National High School Baseball Coaches Assn. in Albuquerque, N.M.