In another first for Ojai Valley School cross country, OVS runners won both the boys and girls individual league titles and the boys and girls team championships at Wednesday’s Omega League Cross Country final.
As has been true all season, the OVS boys were led by junior Kai Ishikawa, who dominated the field and missed the course record by just one second. Kai’s time of 16:48 was more than a minute faster than the second place finisher.
On the girls side, sophomore Akyra Wachter captured the league crown in a time of 22:20, leading a group of four other OVS girls to Top 10 finishes at the meet held at the flat-and-fast Soule Park cross country course in Ojai.
Taken together, it was the first time in school history that individual OVS runners and the OVS boys and girls teams have swept the top honors at the league final, a championship race that is the gateway to CIF post-season racing.
“The league final is the culmination of months of hot, hard, hilly work by the two dozen OVS runners who committed to bettering themselves this season,” said OVS cross country coach Fred Alvarez, noting that it was fourth league championship in a row for the boys squad.
“Almost every runner set a personal best on Wednesday,” coach Alvarez added. “And our fastest runners, both as individuals and as part of teams, set a standard that will be hard to match in the future.”
The top seven runners in each race earned All-League Honors and hard-earned medals for a day of racing in which runners endured temperatures in the high 80s.
In addition to Akyra, who as league champion is also the league MVP, medals in the girls race went to seniors Adele Erk and Towako Hiramatsu, and sophomore Celeste Ayala. They finished third, fifth and seventh respectively.
In the boys race, medalists in addition to Kai (also league MVP) included sophomore Russell Zhuang and senior Ben Scordamaglia, who finished in fifth and sixth place.
By virtue of their league championship victories, both the boys and girls teams have earned the right to to take part in the CIF preliminaries at the famed Mt. Sac cross country course on Friday, November 15.
“We still have some racing to do,” coach Alvarez said. “We’ll go take on Mt. Sac and see what we can do there. A lot of these runners are peaking at just the right time, so it will be interesting to see how they handle that course.”
