The Trinity Knights made history on Tuesday at the Heritage League cross-country Finals with the boys snapping Desert Christian’s 35-year winning streak to win the championship and the girls breaking school records to claim the title.
“Going into this race, I told the athletes that I didn’t want them focusing on running a certain time or achieving a certain place,” caoch Jarod Ebenhack said. “We wanted to reject the idea of running to avoid a particular outcome and instead run with a sense of curiosity.”
For the boys, the Knights won by a score of 24 to Desert Christian’s 49 with five runners placing among the top seven finishers.
Senior James Selby led Trinity with a second-place finish and total time of 16:35.0.
For the Heritage League championship, all the Knights needed for the win was a second-place finish with a win in the prelims earlier in the season.
With the win, the Knights won the school’s first-ever Heritage League title in boys’ cross country with an average team time of 16:50.4.
As for the girls, the Knights secured the Heritage League title and made history with broken school records.
Freshman Kenzie Calderon won the individual Heritage League championship with a total time of 19:18.0 and finished 46 seconds ahead of second-place Desert Christian’s Julia Billingsley, who finished with a 20:04.0.
With the first-place finish on Tuesday, Calderon broke Trinity’s individual 3-mile school record.
As a team, the girls – with the five qualified runners – combined for a team time of 1:45.10, averaging 21:02.0 per runner and broke the school record for total team time.
Despite the school record, Desert Christian took the win in the girls’ 3-mile race with five runners in the top 11 and edged past the Knights, 30-34. But with Trinity having won the league’s two previous meets, the Knights secured the Heritage League championship on Tuesday.
For Ebenhack, winning the league championship across both boys and girls meant more as the Trinity coach served as athletic director and assistant coach at Desert Christian during the school’s 2016 boys’ state-championship winning season.
“The fact that their boys had the longest league winning streak in California at 35 straight years, and that I would eventually coach the team that ended that streak, never even crossed my mind,” Ebenhack said.
While Trinity saw success in the Heritage League Finals, the Legacy Christian Academy Lions finished fourth with 124 points and secured the final qualifying berth for the CIF Southern Section prelims.
Junior Tyler Sackett led Legacy with an 11th place finish and total time of 17:21.21 for the boys and joined the Knights with automatic berths to the prelims.
As for the Legacy girls, only two teams – Desert Christian and Trinity – advanced with automatic berths to the prelims with sophomore Allie Theule leading all Lion runners with a total time of 22:01.00.
Despite the team not earning an automatic berth, Theule’s top 10 finish qualified the sophomore individually for the prelims.
As for Santa Clarita Christian, junior Chase McDowell led the Cardinals’ boys with an 18th place finish and total time of 18:02.00. And for the girls, junior Lizzy Bucknell led all Santa Clarita Christian runners with a 21st place finish and time of 23:53.00.
The CIF Southern Section prelims are scheduled for Friday, Nov. 13, through Saturday, Nov. 14, at Mt. San Antonio College in Walnut with the finals set to be held on the following Saturday, Nov. 21.
