Surprising Ventura Girls Show Canyon Who’s Boss

WALNUT —  It hasn’t taken Bill Tokar long to make a mark in his first season back as the Ventura High cross-country coach.

Two weeks after nearly upsetting Nordhoff in the Ventura County championships and nine days after dominating the Channel League finals, the Ventura girls’ team pulled another surprise Saturday in the Southern Section preliminaries at Mt. San Antonio College.

Paced by junior Isabel DeJounge and senior Jordana Gustafson, the Cougars defeated defending state Division I champion Canyon, 43-68, to win their Division II heat.

The top four teams in each of three divisional heats and top-10 individual finishers advanced to the section championships at Mt. SAC on Saturday.

Canyon’s Lauren Fleshman and Julie Harris finished second and fifth in their heat with times of 18 minutes 15 seconds and 18:52 over the three-mile course, but Ventura placed five runners among the top 14 to overtake the Cowboys.

DeJounge, an exchange student from Sweden, placed sixth in 19:24 and Gustafson was seventh in 19:31. Then came teammates Alyson MacIntosh, ninth in 19:45; Nicole Campbell, 10th in 19:47; and Rachel Osborn, 14th in 20:13.

Not bad for a team that began the season with a modest goal of qualifying for the section preliminaries by finishing among the top three teams in its league meet.

“From the beginning of the season, I had no idea that this team would be this good,” said Tokar, who was a co-coach at Ventura from 1985-89. “We had a lot of girls that had little or no experience in cross-country, but I knew they were all good athletes who had played other sports. When you have a team like that, good things can happen.”

Good things have.

After not being ranked among the top 10 teams in the Southern Section Division II poll at the end of the regular season, Ventura has a solid shot at advancing to the State championships with a top-four finish in the section finals.

“Hopefully, we can keep it together next week and get a trip [to the State championships] out of it,” Tokar said.

“But even if we don’t, it’s been a great season.”

Seven teams and 12 individuals from the region posted victories.

Andrea Neipp of Highland, Elaine Canchola of Nordhoff and Sarah Ellis of La Canada headed the list of local heat winners in the girls’ meet, and Tim Leahy of Burbank and David Lopez of Hoover paced the boys.

Neipp posted the fastest girls’ time of the meet (17:45) to win her Division II heat, and Canchola (18:16) and Ellis (18:19) led their teams to runaway victories at the Division IV level.

Nordhoff, paced by the 1-2-3 finish of Canchola, Rae Stumbough (19:53) and Bridie Hatch (19:57), easily defeated second-place South Hills, 22-69.

La Canada, powered by the 1-2-4 finishes of Ellis, Kim Garnic (18:34) and Sheila Maude (20:11), totaled 36 points with Rancho Alamitos second at 94.

Leahy clocked 15:27, the second-fastest time of the meet at any level, in a Division II heat and Mt. SAC Invitational champion Lopez ran 15:28 in a Division I race.