Southern Section Cross-Country Championships : Corona del Mar Boys Hope It’s Their Turn to Capture Elusive Title

Few would argue with the suggestion that Corona del Mar High School has a great boys’ cross-country team.

The Sea Kings have a superb front-runner in senior Eddie Lavelle, one of the top prep distance runners in the nation. They have great depth, as evidenced by an ever-changing, ever-improving pack of runners.

And they have experience. Five of the top seven have been teammates for the last 4 years. As a group, they have never lost a freshman, sophomore, junior or senior-class competition.

Still, in one unforgettable way, greatness has eluded Corona del Mar. Although the team has won the last two Orange County championships, and is 20-2 in 4 years of dual-meet competition, the Sea Kings have yet to win a Southern Section championship.

The school came closest in 1983, finishing second to El Toro.

Saturday at 8 a.m., Corona del Mar’s current seniors will have their last chance when they face 11 other 4-A division finalists at the Southern Section Championships at Mt. San Antonio College in Walnut.

Defending champion Dana Hills and top-ranked Camarillo are expected to give second-ranked Corona del Mar its greatest challenge. Other highly ranked teams are Canyon Country Canyon (third) and Santa Ana (fourth).

For Corona del Mar, Saturday’s race offers not only a chance at the 4-A title, but a means to make up for a disappointing fourth-place finish in 1986 and 1987.

Last year, the Sea Kings and top-ranked Palos Verdes were considered slight favorites, but Dana Hills put together a tremendous team effort for the upset.

The Sea Kings admit that much of their current motivation is based on previous Southern Section performances.

“Just knowing that the last couple of years we’ve been so close, that we’ve had the chances but we didn’t do it . . . that memory’s always there,” Lavelle said.

“Every time we go in the gym for a pep rally, we look up at all the (Southern Section) banners from the other sports. There’s no banner for us, and we know there should be.”

Lavelle, who began competing in age-group races 10 years ago, has led the Sea Kings since he transferred from Mater Dei after his freshman year. He, along with Santa Ana Valley’s Jimmy Rodriguez, Dana Hills’ Mike Tansley and Thousand Oaks’ Mike Williamson, are considered favorites for the 4-A individual title.

But Lavelle refused to speak Wednesday of his individual goals or strategies: “It’s not the time for that. My main goal is for the team to win.”

If Corona del Mar is to do that, it must outrun Dana Hills. The Dolphins, who started the season with a No.-1 ranking but slipped from the polls at midseason after an infiltration of injury and illness, showed they are back at full strength last Friday at the Southern Section preliminaries. There, Dana Hills outran Camarillo by 4 points to win its heat.

“I’m really excited about the (final) race now,” Dana Hills Coach Tim Butler said. “But I think it just hit me how much harder it is to repeat.” The last team to repeat in the 4-A division was Palos Verdes in the 1977 and ’78.

The Dolphins are led by identical twins Mike and Andrew Tansley, and brothers Steve and Dan Niednagel. They form what probably is the strongest foursome in the state.

But, because all team scores are calculated by combining the numerical places of a team’s top five runners, Dana Hills’ fifth man--sophomore and first-year runner Brandon Sullivan--could be the one who makes or breaks the race for Dana Hills.

Which is why Corona del Mar feels it has a slight advantage.

Behind Lavelle, the Sea Kings’ second through seventh runners have switched positions--all the while improving--many times throughout the season.

At the Sea View League championships, for example, Chris Cannon, who barely made the top seven at season’s beginning, jumped to the No. 2 spot. And last week, Hunter Pierce, who didn’t make the top five at the league finals, finished as the No. 2 Sea King.

“Dana Hills has a great team, but their fifth man can kill them,” Corona del Mar Coach Bill Sumner said. “With us, the pressure is dispersed among three or four or five guys to come through . . . and all they’re doing is getting faster.”

But will they be fast enough to upset not only Dana Hills but the top-ranked team?

Camarillo, led by juniors Shawn Goetzinger, Abe Valdez and Chad Malesich, finished third in last year’s Southern Section finals and has defeated Corona del Mar twice this season, at the Stanford and Mt. SAC invitationals.

But Corona del Mar has been very close to Camarillo each time. Only 25 seconds (in overall team times) separated the two at Mt. SAC.

“The boys know we’re close, they know Camarillo can’t blow them out,” Sumner said. “So because of that, they know this could be our turn.”

Race Notes

Other county boys’ teams competing in the 4-A final are: seventh-ranked El Modena, eighth-ranked Villa Park, 10th-ranked Fountain Valley and unseeded Saddleback. Bill Gould of Capistrano Valley and Mike Farrell of San Clemente will compete as individuals. . . . Orange County will be well-represented in the girls’ 4-A final, a race defending champion and top-ranked Palos Verdes is expected to win. Challengers will include: Newport Harbor, Villa Park, Irvine, Huntington Beach, San Clemente, El Toro, Foothill, Tustin and Mater Dei. Individuals in that race include Edison’s Shelley Taylor, University’s Tanja Brix, Katella’s Martha Pinto and Santa Ana Valley’s Maria Vargas and Teresa Beltran . . . Other county teams competing include: La Habra (girls 3-A); Laguna Hills, Woodbridge and Brea-Olinda (boys 2-A); Woodbridge (girls 2-A); and Whittier Christian (boys 1-A).