BELL-JEFF CROSS-COUNTRY INVITATIONAL : Thousand Oaks Girls’ and Boys’ Teams Programmed for Victory

The Thousand Oaks High girls’ cross-country team was in peak form Saturday. The Lancer boys were trying to regain the form of their 1993 State Division I championship season. Both teams ran to victory in the seeded races of the Bell-Jeff Invitational at Griffith Park.

Thousand Oaks’ girls, paced by junior Kim Mortensen’s victory in 17 minutes 24 seconds over the 2.9-mile course, placed five runners among the top 11 for 33 points. Palos Verdes Peninsula and Los Alamitos were second and third with 59 and 68 points.

Thousand Oaks’ boys, bolstered by the season debuts of seniors Jeff Fischer and Kevin Marsden who have been sidelined because of illness and a back injury, squeaked by Peninsula, 69-71. Hart, which had defeated Thousand Oaks in the Seaside Invitational on Sept. 10, was third with 76 points.

“What I see is us getting better every week in the boys,” Thousand Oaks Coach Jack Farrell said. “Our girls are very healthy and I’d like us to sustain that level. Improvement there is going to come a little bit at a time because they are running very well.”

The Thousand Oaks boys, the No. 2 team in the Harrier magazine’s national preseason poll, must improve over the next week if they are to challenge Kingwood, Tex., the nation’s top-ranked team, in the Southwestern University Invitational on Oct. 1.

Thousand Oaks senior Keith O’Doherty placed second in 14:29, 10 seconds behind Brett Strahan of Hart, who ran the second-fastest time in the meet’s 21-year history.

Junior Todd Disney was eighth (14:57) and Fischer was 14th (15:19) for Thousand Oaks. But the Lancers’ Nos. 4 and 5 runners, Josh Carolan and Marsden, finished in 15:45 for 22nd and 23rd place.

“Our team isn’t going to be at full strength until late in the season,” Fischer said. “I wasn’t even going to try be up there with our top guys. I just wanted to get a feeling of what it’s like to be in a race again.

“I just wanted to run well enough for our team to win. We did, but it was close.”

Mortensen overtook Los Alamitos’ Kim Bates with a little more than a mile to go on the course’s longest hill and cruised to a 33-second victory over Peninsula’s Molly Mehlberg in the meet’s seventh-fastest time ever.

Tara Marsden finished fifth (18:46), Bridget Roy seventh (18:48), Katie Scherrei ninth (19:00) and Alison Feinstein 11th (19:21) for Thousand Oaks.