Santa Ana, OCC Get Off on Right Foot

The first official sporting event to be held at Riverside College’s Moreno Valley campus will be Saturday when the Orange Empire Conference holds its cross-country men’s and women’s preview runs.

The season is only a week old but the Orange Coast women’s team, which won the state title last year, and the Santa Ana men’s team had impressive victories at the Fresno Invitational.

Orange Coast won Saturday’s 24-team event with 67 points and Mt. San Antonio (102) was second. Orange Coast had four runners among the top 20, led by Zoila Gomez (Costa Mesa High), who finished fourth, and Penni Proffitt (Rancho Alamitos) who was 10th.

Santa Ana won the men’s division with 120 points as Alex Reyes led the Dons with a seventh-place finish. Bakersfield (137) was second and Mt. San Antonio (145) third.

“It was very exciting,” Santa Ana Coach Al Siddons said. “It was a very fast first mile. [The leaders] went out in 4 minutes 40 seconds. . . . The strength of our team is hard work. They are not afraid to train and sacrifice.”

The teams will return to Moreno Valley for the conference finals on Oct. 31.

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Two quarterbacks from Orange County high schools had outstanding games on the opening Saturday of Mission Conference play.

Sean Stein, a sophomore at Long Beach who is from Los Alamitos High, passed for 257 yards and three touchdowns in the Vikings’ 47-3 victory over Riverside.

John Leonard, a freshman from Mater Dei High, threw for 230 yards and five touchdowns as El Camino defeated Golden West, 63-23.

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The Mission Conference holds four of the top five spots in the weekly Southland football poll.

Long Beach (1-0) is first, Mt. San Antonio (1-0) second and El Camino (1-0) third. All are members of the conference’s Northern Division. Bakersfield (1-0) is fourth and Palomar (1-0), a member of the Southern Division, is fifth. Hancock (1-0) is sixth, Grossmont (1-0) seventh, Pasadena (1-0) eighth, Chaffey (1-0) ninth and Moorpark (0-0) is 10th.

Fullerton (1-0) was the top vote-getter not in the top 10.

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The community college state office has a new web site (https://www.coasports.org), which so far it isn’t up-to-date. But the state office says it will be more topical soon.

The plan is to have football scores, statistics and the state poll on the site no later than Tuesday afternoon each week.

For now, it’s a nice place to find the football schedule for all teams in the state and recent water polo scores and polls.