CdM boys on top in cross country

ORANGE — Corona del Mar High cross country coach Bill Sumner knows what to say to his runners to make them happy.

As his boys came back from their post-race warm down after the Orange County Championships sweepstakes race late Saturday morning at Irvine Regional Park, Sumner was able to pump them up after finding out they took 11th place.

“Hey, you guys know the girls got 12th right?” he said to his boys’ team, which typically is in the shadow of the CdM girls program.

The runners cheered before one asked a question.

“How did [the] Harbor [boys] do?” he asked, and Sumner was quick to respond.

“They got 12th,” he said, which led to a bit more celebration.

Sumner smiled.

“You’ve got to find something for them to be happy about, right?” he said.

The longtime Sea Kings coach indeed was pleased, and his boys indeed had the top finish among Back Bay teams in the top race, the sweepstakes race, with their 11th-place finish. Newport Harbor’s boys indeed placed 12th in the 14-team race, won by Dana Hills.

Dana Hills won its seventh county title on the boys’ side, surpassing Costa Mesa which has won six.

CdM’s girls, led by junior Raquel Powers, were 12th among the 15 teams in the girls’ sweepstakes race on the three-mile course. Trabuco Hills won the race. Newport Harbor’s girls, paced by second-place finisher Emily Bacon, finished 10th among 21 teams in the Division 2 race.

Senior Thomas Robertson led CdM, placing 27th with a time of 15 minutes, 43 seconds, followed by junior Leif Hellgren in 29th in 15:45. Both were medalists. Senior Matthew Paragas (52nd, 16:03), junior Daniel Le (94th, 17:05) and sophomore Rhamseys Garcia (95th, 17:18) also scored for the Sea Kings.

“As a team, we just have so many young guys,” Robertson said. “They have a lot of potential ... I’m excited about running [the] Mt. SAC [Invitational on Friday]. I feel like we’ll do awesome, because we train a lot on hills. That’s a lot of our summer workouts, and we have this big hill near CdM. We don’t love running it, but we have to.”

Junior Ben Wilson led Newport Harbor’s boys in the sweepstakes race, finishing 17th in a personal-best time of 15:18. The other medalist for the Sailors was senior Erik Herrera (47th, 15:58), and junior Mark Field (69th, 16:21), junior Anthony Agama (80th, 16:30) and junior Seanliam McCarthy (92nd, 16:56) also scored.

Wilson was happy with his time, though he still hopes to break 15 minutes this season. He has at least two more chances to do so, as the Sailors boys run next weekend at the Riverside City Cross Country Course, which is the new site of the CIF Southern Section Preliminaries meet this year. Newport then runs in the league finals on Oct. 31.

Newport boys’ Coach Nowell Kay believes his team can finish in the top three at league finals and advance to the preliminaries, especially if he moves freshman Alexis Garcia up to varsity for that race. Garcia placed second in the Division 2 boys’ freshman race in 16:32, which would have scored fifth for the Sailors’ varsity.

“It’s going to be a dogfight between us and Fountain Valley for third in league, and even Marina’s pretty close,” Kay said. “I like to think we have the secret weapon with the freshman that we can slide in there.”

On the girls’ side, CdM has not been close to 100%. Powers missed last weekend’s Clovis Invitational with a left hip injury, and senior captains Jacqueline Choe and Lilly Schmidt have been battling sickness.

Sumner was hoping for a top-10 finish as a team on Saturday, but he did get one individually with Powers, who medaled as the ninth-place finisher in 17:54. So did Choe (43rd, 18:50) and senior Hannah Crane (49th, 18:56), while Schmidt (73rd, 19:35) and freshman Gigi Lee (83rd, 19:55) also scored.

“Keep rolling,” said Sumner, whose girls team is ranked No. 6 in CIF Southern Section Division 3. “You just try to raise the bar a little higher each week. Our whole goal is to get to the state championships in Division 3.”

A repeat trip to state would mean a lot to the Sea Kings, Choe said.

“I think if we have a chance to go back [to Clovis] at state, we’ll be ready,” Choe said. “We don’t want to just barely make it this time. Last year, we barely made it, so we want to be for sure that we’re meant to be there.”

Bacon ran 18:25 in the Division 2 girls’ race for the second-place finish. The other girl to earn a medal for the Sailors was freshman Mia Matsunami, who ran a personal-best time of 19:07, good for 14th place in the race.

“She’s going to be very good,” Newport Coach Eric Tweit said of Matsunami. “She’s just finding out what it’s like to run. She didn’t have a great summer of training, just because as a freshman she was gone on vacation, playing soccer, and now she’s been focusing on this.”

Senior captain Holly Clemence placed 44th for the Sailors in the Division 2 girls’ race, in 19:33. Freshman Claire Bacon (101st, 21:02) and senior Johanna Camberos (121st, 21:56) also scored.

Tweit noted that Emily Bacon was the second-fastest Sunset League girl at Orange County Championships, behind only Huntington Beach’s Cassie Durgy, who ran 17:39 in the sweepstakes race. That bodes well for Bacon advancing past league finals for the second straight year.

“It’s the best race by far that we’ve had all year long,” Tweit said. “We’re getting better.”