The Hart boys’ and Saugus girls’ cross country teams captured the wins on Saturday morning in the first Foothill League meet of the season at Central Park.
Saugus’ Adrian Cantu crossed the finish line first in the boys’ 3-mile race at 15:11.50. And although that was six seconds ahead of the next runner, the Hawks took the team victory with four runners in the top 10.
“It was a good day for us,” Hart coach Darren James said. “We’ve had a little bit of a sickness on the team for the past couple of weeks, so it was kind of our chance to come back and be healthy.”
Josiah Himsl finished in fifth place for his team at 15:23.50, just 12 seconds behind the pace. His coach says he is a runner he can always count on to perform.
“He’s a rock-solid guy,” James said. “It could be any one of our guys, any given day, but he’s always very consistent.”
James wasn’t sure about how the team was going to perform considering the illness surrounding the team but was proud of his runners executing when they needed to during the race.
“Our goal today was to come in and be good — we didn’t need to be great,” James said. “Our goal was to try and put five guys in front of everybody else’s second and for the most part with a couple of exceptions, we did a good job of that.”
Samuel Aina, Nicolas Zamora, and Jameson Wiley placed sixth, seventh and ninth in the standings, respectively. And Hart’s other runners, Jordan Ibarra and Mile Prante finished 18th and 22nd with Julian Zamora rounding out the team in 32nd.
Cantu, who won the boys race, spoke about his familiarity with the course as the Saugus cross country team practices at Central Park every day.
“We go here most days to practice,” Cantu said. “I was just in my own zone, listening to music, relaxing, breathing techniques and just focusing on what’s going to come up.”
In the girls’ race, Valencia’s Reese Ray took victory with a 18:59.50 time but it was Saugus that dominated the event with all seven runners placing in the top 10.
Annika Mark finished second at 19:09.90 and her teammate Lucia Pearson finished third in 19:28.70.
Jersey Baker finished fifth, Kai Ramsbottom sixth, and Alexandra Acevedo, Sydney Kasahara and Amanda Yanez placed eighth, ninth and 10th, respectively.
Following the race, Saugus girls’ coach Kevin Burns spoke about the dominant performance from his team and how the team needs to keep up the pace if they want to chase another Foothill League title.
“We took care of what we needed to do,” Burns said. “The objective is really to finish one or two because that keeps you in contention for the league title. We’re focused on ourselves, And I try to tell people, we’re a good team but that doesn’t mean anything six weeks from now if things haven’t changed. So, we’re focused in the moment and taking it one race at a time.”
As a team, Saugus finished ahead of second-place Hart by 24 points, a feat Burns just credits to his runners, who he believes are the top runners in the league.
“The plan was not to go hard,” Burns said. “The plan was to win the race, and we did exactly what we did. We’re hoping league finals is different and that we have Lucia Pearson and Annika Mark up there challenging for the individual league title, along with the team title.”
Ray, who won the race and was the only Valencia runner to finish in the top 10, was battling through injury this week but pushed herself during the race.
“I actually had a knee injury a little bit earlier,” Ray said. “So, I didn’t think I was gonna do that good, but I ended up being OK and it felt good.”
With the Central Park course having a hilly terrain, Ray stated that the race was a tough course but, in the end, pushed herself to finish 10 seconds ahead of the next runner.
“The hills started to hurt my knee a lot,” Ray said. “I just had to battle it out with the hills, and I just pushed myself.”
These teams will race again against each other at the Foothill League Finals, set to be held on Oct. 30 at Central Park.
