The Hart Hawks couldn’t have asked for a better start to the 2024 cross country season.
Heading down to Pomona for the Coolbreeze Invitational on Saturday, the Hart girls took first place in the small-school 3-mile race while the boys finished third in the Sundown Showdown, raced at the end of the night under the lights.
Combining the small school results with the big schools, the girls were 19th and the boys were second.
“We’ve really been working to rebuild our girls’ program to kind of catch up to the boys,” said head coach Darren James in a phone interview. “And they just took like a quantum leap forward on Saturday winning that race.”
Both Hawks teams finished ahead of Foothill League opponents West Ranch. The Wildcats boys were 10th in the small school race and the girls were 16th.
James saw three Hart girls finish in the top 10. Senior Andrea Aina was fifth at 19:25.6, followed by freshmen Sasha Berry and Julia Redwine, taking seventh at 19:39.5 and eighth at 19:39.6, respectively.
He said there hasn’t been an influx of youth in the program on the girls’ side, but Berry and Redwine have quite a bit of experience running at the youth levels and came into their freshman campaigns ready to go.
“Whenever you get a kid like that that has experience racing as a youth, and they understand kind of the dynamics of racing, you just latch on to those kids because you can really build a program around them,” James said. “And with those two freshmen girls, it’s exactly what we needed to reboot the girls’ program, and we took full advantage of it on Saturday.”
Senior Eli Ahten led the way for the Hart boys, coming in ninth at 14:57.7 in the Sundown Showdown, considered to be the championship race at the event, James said. He added that Ahten is “consistently our No. 1 guy” after getting a league championship in the 3200-meter race in track and field in the spring.
Trailing behind him were senior Alejandro Cueto (27th, 15:23.7) and sophomore Samuel Aina (39th, 15:38.5). James said the team was missing two of its three top runners in senior Josue Lopez and junior Nicholas Zamora.
“We knew coming into the year that that this was going to be a really strong year for us,” James said. “We graduated one senior last year, so we were returning almost the entire top seven, and we had three freshmen last year who were exceptional. And there’s always a ton of growth specifically between the freshman and the sophomore year.”
Coming off a league championship in 2023, James is expecting another push for a league title from his boys this year. He said he also expects his girls to challenge for the league title.
Confident in the physical training that his runners go through, James said he’s been more impressed with how they have been able to latch on to the mental training that he’s added using sports psychologists.
“There’s a lot of negative self-talk and things that go on, and so we did a lot of work on that. We were the most competitive I’ve ever seen us on Saturday night,” James said. “So, I feel great that the mental performance stuff is paying off, and that’s not an overnight fix. You’ve got to practice that every single week and get better and better and better at it, because it’s only getting harder and harder and harder.”
The Hawks have this weekend off before the first Foothill League race of the year on Saturday, Sept. 14.
