The Santa Barbara High boys finished in fourth place and the girls took seventh at the Lake Casitas Twilight Cross Country Meet on Wednesday.
The runners ran on a 1.9-mile course.
“It was a good chance to run a fast aggressive race and get a little more experience at the site of our next Channel League Meet.”
Sophomore Ally Garza (24th place in 12:47) and freshman Hailey Zheng (37th, 13:09) led the Dons girls.
“Ally just keeps going out and racing well for us. She does everything you could ask of her,” said Santa Barbara coach Olivia Perdices. “Hailey is still just learning how to race in bigger and faster fields. She really stepped it up today”
Jake Ballantine (14th, 10:14) was the top finisher for the Santa Barbara boys. Thomas Everest (25th, 10:42), Mark Hernandez (30th, 10:57) and Marco Hernandez (33rd, 11:06) also medaled for the Dons. Alex Poirier (48th, 11:19), Gibson Field-Elliott (49th,11:20) and Sam Johnson (67th,11:41) finished out the scoring.
“Jake was the top freshman on the day and did a great job running an aggressive race start to finish,” Perdices said. “We also had a couple of packs of guys really race well together and push each other. That’s so important to putting together good team scores.”
Santa Barbara is back at Lake Casitas for the second Channel League Meet on Thursday, Oct. 13.
— Noozhawk sports editor Barry Punzal can be reached at bpunzal@noozhawk.com. Follow Noozhawk Sports on Twitter: @NoozhawkSports. Connect with Noozhawk on Facebook.