Walnut tough to crack

Laguna Beach crosscountry teams face a tough course at Mount SAC Invitational.For the second time this school year, the Laguna Beach High cross-country program will run the tricky terrain at Mount San Antonio College in Walnut when it competes at the Mount SAC Invitational.

The nation’s largest invitational begins today with competition among small schools and continues Saturday with large schools.

Both the Laguna boys’ and girls’ teams will run today in Division IV sweepstakes races.

“My hope is that they gain experience on how to run on the Mount SAC course,” Laguna girls’ coach Earl Towner said.

“They have a big race coming up in a few weeks, and Friday’s race should be good preparation.”

Laguna will be back in Walnut a third time in a few weeks: The CIF-Southern Section preliminaries and finals will be run at Mount SAC on Nov. 12 and Nov. 19, respectively.

Laguna first ran the course on Sept. 10 during the Mount SAC Fastback Shootout.

The Mount SAC course is notorious for three big hills, each bearing a name.

The first hill, which comes just after the first-mile mark, is called Switchback, the second Poop-Out Hill and the third Reservoir.

The course is just under three miles.

“It’s definitely challenging, and for a first-time runner, it can be intimidating,” Towner said. “I will run three freshman from the varsity team in the freshman race Friday. By doing that, it will set the precedent for them for meets and races to come.”

Towner will run Kelly McCarter, Melissa Lenker and Zoe Heath in today’s freshman race.

It’s the trio’s first attempt on the course, he said.

Running in today’s sweepstakes race for Laguna are juniors Alex Crawley, Avery Zoellner, Kady Tucker and Stephanie Pearson, senior Jamie Hancock and sophomores Chanel Brooks and Ashley Eaton.

At last year’s invitational, Towner said that Laguna took second-place at the varsity, junior varsity, sophomore and freshman levels.

Neither the Laguna girls’ or boys’ teams ran the Orange County Championships last weekend at Irvine Regional Park in Orange.

Boys’ coach Dave Brobeck said that October is an important month for his team’s training progression.

“We didn’t run Orange County this year because I felt that we would benefit more with a good Saturday El Morro hill workout,” he said. “It’s easy to choose too many races and beat the guys down before November. We are using this time to get healthy, improve our speed work, and bond.”

One race the Laguna boys have chosen to run is today’s in Walnut.

“It will simply be a race of curious importance to me,” Brobeck said.

“I don’t expect to do incredibly well. I do look forward to seeing how many of the powers in the state are running at this time. I expect them to beat us. I don’t care a whole lot about this right now. We are still leading up to our races that have significance.

“Everything before CIF is preseason, in my mind. I won’t compromise great performances in CIF for accolades in these races now.

“Mount SAC is important, though, in that we need to intimately know how to race this course for CIF. We will return to Mount SAC for CIF finals on November 19. That is the race we will show up to win.”