XC: Chandler girls, Page boys win at Ojo Rojo

September 15, 2018 by Les Willsey, AZPreps365


Chandler High's Morgan Foster takes the final paces to her course-record-setting triumph at the 30th Ojo Rojo XC meet at Tumbleweed Park. (AzPreps365 photo)

Chandler's girls cross country team continued its mastery of the Ojo Rojo Invitational the school hosts every mid-September Saturday and senior Morgan Foster stamped an exclamation point on the Wolves' latest triumph with a record run at Tumbleweed Park.

Foster, running well ahead of the pack without a challenger, sliced 33 seconds off the course record on the 5K course with a time of 17 minutes, 37 seconds. Several runners, including Foster, had run either 18:10 or 18:11 the past couple of years. The chase to break Foster's new record time may take awhile. Chandler's team score was 37 with Becca Taylor, Leonela Lizzaraga, Brooke Eversden and Daniela Montufar also scoring for the Wolves. North Canyon was second, Corona del Sol third, Chaparral fourth and Boulder Creek fifth. This is the fourth year in a row Chandler has won the girls title.

Foster won the race for the second time in three tries. She won the varsity race as a sophomore in 2016 and was third in 2015.  She missed the state cross country meet with a hip injury last year. A horrific car accident slowed her in the spring in track for a time, but she is she  back strong  and seems only to be getting better. Scary better.

"We had a really good practice run earlier this week and I felt ready," Foster said. "This was the first race this year I went out to get a good time. I was looking forward to running against (Chaparral's) Abi Archer, but sad she wasn't here."

Archer won the Division II state meet last year. This year Archer and Foster will compete in the Division I meet since Chaparral has moved up a division. Foster finished 43 seconds ahead of runner-up Maggie Gibbs from Cactus, who knocked 46 seconds off her time from the Chandler Invitational two weeks ago on the Tumbleweed course.

In the boys varsity race, Page won the team title and took individual honors as senior Bowen Martin crossed the finish line first. His winning time was 16:03. The pack was fairly tight with 17 seconds separating first through sixth place. Martin topped Corona del Sol's Joel Wadsworth (16:09).

Martin termed his performance decent, but believed he could have done better.

"I was a little frustrated because I took a couple wrong turns and that made me have to speed up a couple times," Martin said.

Page finished with the team low for both genders with 32 points. Following Martin in and scoring for the Sand Devils were  Morgan Fowler, Trent Holiday, Skylar Sandoval and Lance Harris. Page's boys were last year's D-III state champs.

Other race winners on Saturday: freshman boys went to Cactus' Alex Murphy (17:56); freshman girls to Ironwood Ridge's Maya Bauer (20:32); open non-varsity girls to Chandler's Netawn Marsoobian (21:49) and  open non-varsity boys to Brophy Prep's Jackson Moran (18:07).