Wintemute on to Fresno

WALNUT — Out of Estancia, Corona del Mar, Newport Harbor and Sage Hill School, only one high school boys’ cross country runner is going to state.

Say hi to Lion Wintemute.

He’s a junior at Sage Hill.

Wintemute qualified after finishing in 11th place in 16 minutes, 27 seconds in the CIF Southern Section Division V championships at Mt. San Antonio College Saturday.

The Sea Kings, Sailors and Lightning each advanced teams to state out of their respective section divisions last year.

Estancia’s best shot at sending a runner to Fresno’s Woodward Park next Saturday was Fernando Orozco in the Division III race.

Orozco missed out after placing 12th in 15:48. He was 18 seconds late, ending his senior year without a trip to state.

“It sucks really bad,” said Orozco, who advanced to the state meet as a freshman with the entire Eagles’ team.

As was the case with the rest of the divisions, Estancia needed to place in the top seven to qualify as a team.

The Eagles took ninth. Coach Charlie Appell summed up the reason why.

“It was just a bad week,” he said. “We just didn’t seem to have any chemistry. They were a little lacking [in] their emotional will.

“For four of them it wasn’t [a long season], but two of them it might’ve been because some of them were looking [forward] to basketball.”

For Corona del Mar, Coach Bill Sumner said the goal was just to reach the Division III section finals.

“We lost one guy to grades this week,” Sumner joked after the Sea Kings placed 13th.

Sage Hill had a legit shot to return to state as a team.

“[Seven] points away from qualifying,” said Sage Hill Coach Nate Miller, whose team finished ninth.

Out of the local schools, Newport Harbor finished last in its respective race.

The reason for the performance in Division II after Coach Nowell Kay said the team’s overall time was about a minute slower than last week’s section preliminaries?

“This is a team that likes to do things together,” said Kay, who led the Sailors to the Sunset League championship. “They’ve been together, a lot of them, since elementary school. Six out of our seven guys [Saturday] were seniors and they do things together.

“Unfortunately, the thing they did together [Saturday] was not run very well.”

DAVID CARRILLO PEÑALOZA may be reached at (714) 966-4612 or at [email protected].