Boys brave the cold

FRESNO — The temperature was already a bit chilly for some of the Newport Beach area runners who came into the race with the cold.

The conditions just weren’t ideal for many of the runners competing on the three local high school boys’ cross country teams, Newport Harbor, Corona del Mar and Sage Hill School, at the CIF State championships at Woodward Park’s 5K course in Fresno Saturday.

By the time Newport Harbor ran in the Division II race just past noon, the temperature had risen into the 60s. But a couple of Sailors were trying to get over their colds, another over-eating on Thanksgiving, resulting in a seventh-place showing, which proved to be disappointing since they were expecting more.

When Newport Harbor Coach Nowell Kay received the news that top-ranked Loyola easily won with four runners in the top 20 and his team with none, at least he could take pride in leading the Sailors to their first state appearance since 1998.

“Like the Loyola Coach [Lalo Diaz] was saying, ‘They are just kids,’ ” said Kay, whose team’s goal was to improve on the school’s best Division II finish in 1998, when it took sixth. “That’s definitely true, you never know from week to week what you’re going to get. The consistency is tough.”

CdM ran about an hour earlier, when it was five degrees cooler. But when a couple of runners blamed their colds for finishing 14th in Division III, Coach Bill Sumner laughed.

“If you lose by five seconds to [the] first [place team], then maybe it was the cold,” said Sumner, whose team made up of senior Thomas Dialynas (16 minutes, 15 seconds), senior John Leonard (16:38), senior Richard DeMarco (16:59), sophomore Sebastien Welch (17:15) and junior Matt Haug (17:34) combined time was almost five minutes behind state champ Barstow’s overall time of 79 minutes, 53 seconds.

“But 14th, it’s not the cold. You know other people have colds. It’s that time of the year.”

The temperature at the start of the first boys’ race, Division V for Sage Hill, was the coldest, in the 50s. The Lightning returned to state after a one-year hiatus.

But with last year’s top runner, Connor Rose, battling lung problems the team had no chance to crack the top five when he came in 28th at 17:09 as the Lightning placed eighth.

“I got eighth last year, so not as great,” said Rose, comparing his final state appearance to last year, when he was the lone Sage Hill runner to qualify to Fresno.

The cross country race marked the final one Rose and senior teammate Sean McElroy ran together. McElroy finished 23rd at 16:55. The two hugged after the race in which the next Lightning scoring runners were sophomore Lion Wintemute (39th, 17:17), junior Kyle Simon (106th, 18:48) and sophomore Alex Jimenez (110th, 18:49).

“It’s really tough,” McElroy said. “We’ve trained together year round pretty much since our freshman year. This is our 33rd race together.”

Newport Harbor seniors Rex Nelson and Mike Puncel haven’t run as many races together. But they’re just as close. Puncel ran a strong race after falling near the end of the CIF Southern Section Division II championships.

He bounced back Saturday, finishing 21st at 16:02, 12 seconds faster than Nelson, who placed 29th. The rest of the scoring Sailors were junior Michael Taylor (47th, 16:31), senior Murphy Hitchcock (83rd, 16:50) and junior Jake Dawson (103rd, 17:00)

“Mike Puncel had a great race. I’m thrilled about how we did this season,” said Nelson, referring to Newport Harbor winning the Sunset League championship and placing second at the section finals. “I expected us to be pretty good, but I didn’t know we’d be this good. I think it’s just a series of unfortunate events [that] happened. The guys were off. I had a cold over Thanksgiving. This week was just a fluke for us. We should’ve done a lot better. The tensions were riding high and I think it got to some of us.

“I think it’s bad that the state meet is right after Thanksgiving. I think it should be before, or the week after, because all the runners eat a ton of food.”

DAVID CARRILLO PEÑALOZA may be reached at (714) 966-4612 or at david.carrillo@latimes.com.