Cross Country: Powers, St. Geme lead CdM girls

ORANGE — As kids, Raquel Powers and Tess St. Geme watched their older sisters run for the Corona del Mar High girls’ cross-country team at Irvine Regional Park. The two remember playing with grass, stomping on it, while their sisters stomped on the course at the Orange County Championships.

Coach Bill Sumner guided the older sisters of Powers and St. Geme. He tells a little different story of how the youngsters spent their mornings at meets. From what Sumner recalls, the train at the park fascinated St. Geme more than following her sisters run. He said Powers was different. She ran around, trying to keep up with her sisters races.

On Saturday, Powers and St. Geme returned to the site where their sisters made a name for themselves with the Sea Kings. The next Powers and St. Geme runners to compete for the CdM varsity team led the way at the OC Championships.

The two helped the Sea Kings place seventh in the sweepstakes division, with Powers taking 27th as an individual in 18 minutes, 29 seconds and St. Geme 35th in 18:39 on the three-mile course. Newport Harbor finished 13th in the 14-team race.

The Back Bay schools tend to approach the race in a similar fashion, a way to improve before the upcoming postseason racing begins. Newport Harbor Coach Eric Tweit likes his team to go hard, but injuries curtailed that expectation. Tweit’s top runner, junior Emily Bacon, turned in the best local result, taking 17th in 18:10.

For the most part, CdM has avoided the injury bug at this point in the season. The Sea Kings are hitting their stride. Even though it went mostly up against programs from Division 1 and 2, Division 3 CdM showed it isn’t too far behind the bigger schools.

“I’m happy. We tried something, and most of it worked,” said Sumner, whose team totaled 173 points in the event won by Capistrano Valley (79 points), who finished ahead of Trabuco Hills (108) and Dana Hills (115). “We tried to go with [Capistrano Valley] and Canyon, and [Capistrano Valley] is just too tough. We can’t race [Capistrano Valley, ranked No. 2 in the CIF Southern Section Division 2 poll], but we can race [No. 7-ranked Canyon because we finished 10 points behind fifth-place Canyon], based on how [Canyon] looked today.

“Now what we do, instead of concentrating on Division 1 and Division 2 teams [like we did] today, we’ll go back to concentrate on Division 3 teams, and find out what kind of work we have to do. Our goal is to get to the state meet.”

Sumner believes he has the girls to return to the CIF State finals at Woodward Park in Fresno on Nov. 29. The Sea Kings, ranked No. 2 in Division 3, have missed state in each of the past two seasons. Consider that a dry spell when CdM reached state 22 straight years, a streak ending two years ago.

The best runner for CdM this year has been senior Kirsten Hansen, but she finished 45th (18:49) at the OC Championships. The three CdM runners ahead of her were Powers, a sophomore, St. Geme, a senior, and senior Elin Wolker (43rd, 18:49), while junior Jacqueline Choe placed 52nd (19:03).

“Our team’s really strong this year,” said Powers, who has followed in the footsteps of her two older sisters, Melanie and Ashlee, the latter is at UCLA running.

Tess’ result showed how far she has come in the sport two of her older sisters, Anne and Christie, excelled at during their time at CdM. Anne went to run for Stanford and Christie at UCLA.

“You got to remember Tess used to be a cheerleader,” Sumner said. “This is only Tess’ second year running. I think she was more into shopping and cheerleading two years ago. She didn’t want to get dirty. But now she gets … dirty.

“I tricked her into running, and now she’s helping us a lot. I drove over her to [the lululemon athletica store at Fashion Island] and we used her dad’s credit card.”

The Sailors hope they can buy some time to get healthy for the Sunset League finals at Central Park in Huntington Beach on Nov. 1. The plan is to finish in the top three in league and qualify as a team for the CIF Southern Section Division 2 preliminaries at Mt. San Antonio College on Nov. 15.

Newport Harbor held out its No. 3 runner, Emma Buggeln (ankle), at the OC Championships. Tweit said she wouldn’t run next week at the Mt. San Antonio College Invitational. Tweit’s best five girls on Saturday were Bacon, senior Erin Barth (38th, 18:44), junior Holly Clemence (83rd, 20:07), sophomore Lani Kerrigan (95th, 20:58) and junior Lauren Loucks (99th, 21:24).

In the boys’ sweepstakes event at the OC Championships, CdM and Newport Harbor finished 16th (354 points) and 17th (410), respectively. Brea Olinda (68) claimed the 18-team race, followed by Canyon (82) and Dana Hills (89).

Parker Nostrand, a senior, led the Sea Kings (17th, 15:21), and sophomore Ben Wilson clocked the Sailors’ best finish (25th, 15:38). Costa Mesa senior Anuare Magana, who was 15th in 15:16, produced the No. 1 local individual effort.