Ventura Runners Can’t Rest

Bill Tokar, the girls’ cross-country coach at Ventura High, isn’t the kind to rest on accomplishments. There is always the next practice, the next meet.

So when it comes to appreciating the Cougars’ record-breaking performance last week at the CIF Southern Section cross-country finals, this is the wrong week to look back in admiration.

You can’t look back when the state championships are Saturday at Fresno’s Woodward Park. Leave it to others to rave about the time of 90 minutes 44 seconds, the fastest combined time by a team on the 2.91-mile Mt. San Antonio College course and, perhaps, the greatest team effort in state history.

“I kind of mentioned it to them after the race but then we quickly turned our focus onto state,” said Tokar, whose team easily defended its Division I title. “Maybe after this week, we can kind of step back and say, ‘Whoa, that was quite an accomplishment.’ Right now, we’re still into it. Nobody on the starting line [Saturday] is going to give us a free pass because of what we did last week.”

Ventura, with its bright yellow uniforms, will be one of the topics of conversation among the crowd at Woodward. The Cougars, going for their second consecutive state Division I title, are heavy favorites but figure to be pushed by Fountain Valley, Murrieta Valley and Thousand Oaks.

Kauren Tarver of Phelan Serrano established herself as a top contender in Division II by running a time of 17:06 last week to set a Mt. SAC course record for a freshman. Corona junior Alma Escobar, the Southern Section Division I champion, will be one of the favorites in her race along with Lauren Saylor of Clovis Buchanan.

Among the boys, the Division I race figures to be the highlight of the day. Led by senior Fitsum Tesfa, Chino Don Lugo will try to defend its state title, but it will be an underdog to top-ranked Simi Valley Royal and Dana Hills.

Tesfa will be in a loaded and talented field with Diego Mercado of West Covina, Brandon Bethke of Lake Forest El Toro and A.J. Acosta of Oceanside El Camino. Cal-bound Mark Matusak will attempt to lead Los Angeles Loyola to a Division II championship.

Any regular follower of cross country knows that anything can happen on race day. Ventura, however, may be the surest bet in this meet.

No other team in California -- and possibly in the entire Western region -- possesses as much depth this season. In one of the season’s top races, the Clovis Invitational, the Cougars split their squad into two groups and had one team finish fifth in the championship division and the other take second in the large schools’ race.

The depth is so that they rested their top three runners in the Southern Section preliminaries. With the group together in last week’s finals, the Cougars displayed their dominance.

Emily Spiker took fourth overall when she crossed the finish line in 17 minutes 47 seconds. Molly Bailey and Jessica Bryant were seconds behind in 17:52 and 18:06 respectively to come in sixth and ninth.

Tara Bryant ran it in 18:21 to finish 13th, and Laura Mason arrived in 18:38 to place 22nd. With other solid performers in Lauren Ricketts, Becky Brinkenhoff and Edna Solano, Tokar is free to mix and match his runners.

Tokar says the girls not only focus on running as a pack but push each other toward the front.

“They want to be next to each other and emulate the other girls that are up front,” Tokar said. “There’s an obligation to bring your friends up to your level rather than go down to their level.”

Tokar, the head coach since 1996, used to be the one to admire other top squads and pushed his teams to emulate those champions. Draconian methods, however, weren’t used to develop a now-vaunted program.

The only standard in making the team is meeting a 30-minute mark. Academic achievement is strongly encouraged and study sessions regularly take place in the coach’s office.

“It’s not just something that just happened overnight,” said Tokar, a former runner at NAIA Point Loma Nazarene. “It’s just been a matter of taking care of all the little details and not slacking off.”