[ HIGH SCHOOL SPORTS ]
CINDY ELLEN RUSSELL / CRUSSELL@STARBULLETIN.COM
Kellie Suehisa from Punahou's intermediate team cut off Amber Kuitunen of Iolani due to last-minute confusion as to where the finish chute was yesterday at Kualoa Ranch.
Leland doesn’t
surprise competition
A little "down time" didn't deter Shelby Leland of Washington's Ukiah High School from the matter at hand yesterday afternoon at Kualoa Ranch, where local and mainland talent came together at the fifth annual Iolani Cross Country Invitational.
"We came on Wednesday, and we've just been kind of relaxing," Leland said. "This has been more like a vacation, so I wasn't really nervous about the race. This morning I kind of got myself back into the zone."
Leland's focus paid off as she captured the girls' varsity 5K race with a time of 19 minutes, which was 41 seconds ahead of Maui's Tia Ferguson, who competes for Seabury Hall.
The pair met at a cross country camp in Chula Vista, Calif.; and while Leland didn't consider herself the front-runner to begin the day, Ferguson saw her as the pace-setter.
"I pretty much looked at Shelby as my competition for this race," said Ferguson, who caught the last flight into Honolulu on Friday night to compete in yesterday's race. "It was fun to have her here because I was looking at this race as a way to see how I'm doing. I knew there was a huge uphill right from the start, so I kind of wanted to hold back a little bit. But my competitiveness took over and I kind of got sucked in near the front (of the pack). I didn't want to lose contact with her."
Added Leland: "I started off kind of slow. I was worried and thought that maybe I wasn't pacing myself correctly -- it was the first race I had run this season -- so I kind of just felt it out and let others go ahead of me for a little bit. Then I said, 'I'm just going to go for it.' "
In the boys' 5K, Eisenhower High School of Yakima, Wash., more than lived up to its billing, placing six runners in the top 10, a feat that exceeded even their own hefty expectations.
"Our game plan was to try and get five in the top 20," said Charles Cummings, whose time of 16.40 matched that of Eisenhower teammate Robbie Barany for first place. "We let the Orange County guy (Raul Lara of Orange High School, who finished fourth) take it out (at the start) for us, and we sat on him for a while."
Added Barany: "We did a lot better than we expected. Our coach (Phil English) told us to relax the first mile and start racing the second and third mile, and that's what we stuck to."
Eisenhower, which captured team honors in the boys' varsity division with 19 points, entered the day ranked 24th in the nation by The Harrier's High School Cross Country Report and had finished second in the state to Mead High School last year.
Baldwin's Kainoa Guerin finished 11th (at 17:33) and was the only Hawaii participant to crack the top 25 in the boys' 5K.
"I kind of went out fast, and for a while, I was in sixth, but gradually I dropped during the second and third mile," he said. "I was shooting for 10th place, but I feel pretty good about it (overall)."
While impressed with the array of mainland talent around him, Guerin couldn't help but notice who wasn't in the race. Competitors from the Oahu Interscholastic Association did not take part because they have been instructed to attend only OIA events due to budget cuts.
"I'm kind of bummed that the public schools didn't come," he said. "I've been really wondering about the competition over here (on Oahu). I finished around 14th in the state last year, and in looking at the results, I saw that a lot of the people ahead of me have graduated."
For most of Hawaii's participants, yesterday served as a good means of measuring their abilities.
"It's still early in the season, so it's a good warm-up for everything else that's going to come," said Iolani's Nicole Anderson, who finished 17th in the 5K at 21:07.
Added teammate Joleen Oshiro (20:54), who finished 15th: "It's good preparation for us because we're going to California next month, and we'll be running a 5K there."
Sultana High School of Hesperia, Calif., which entered the day ranked third nationally, won the team competition with a score of 48.
