After winning two junior varsity titles earlier this month, Vanessa Roybal had no problem running in the varsity race.
The Mililani sophomore won Saturday’s OIA cross country championships at Central Oahu Regional Park. She finished the girls 3-mile race in 19 minutes, 24.91 seconds, nearly 30 seconds ahead of the next finisher.
"It’s definitely been a good season," Roybal said. "I feel like my hard work has paid off because I trained really hard this summer."
Makai Clemons of Kalaheo won the boys race, and the Kaiser girls and Radford boys won the team titles — their first team titles in a decade.
Roybal won the JV races at the OIA West and league championships by comfortable margins. On Saturday, she opened up a gap over the competition at the first-mile mark.
"Definitely when you run in these bigger races, the start is a lot faster," Roybal said. "It’s good practice for states because the better the competition gets, the faster it gets."
Clemons’ sole objective for the day was to win the boys race. He was in the lead about a minute into the 3-mile race, opened up a comfortable gap, and finished in 16:19.97. Kalani’s Toshihiro Kosins was second in 16:44.90.
"I wanted to win," Clemons said. "I didn’t need to kill myself with my time because I want to feel good for next week (at the state meet). My main focus was to win."
Familiar with the course after racing on it at the OIA East championship several weeks ago, Clemons knew when to push.
"I knew what to expect with the hills and downhills, knew when I should make moves, and to take it harder on the uphill to (build a) gap."
The Kaiser girls won with a meet-low 40 points, their first team title since 2000. Four of their runners finished in the top 10, and they ran in packs for most of the race. Alea Amano was second in 19:52.27, Lina Schell finished third in 19:57.29, Erika Schell placed fifth in 20:27.03 and Celine Lum was ninth in 20:57.93. Kalaheo was second with 76 points.
"The last couple of years, we haven’t had the strongest teams," Amano said. "This year, when the twins, Lina and Erika, came out, we were like, ‘Wow, we can really do good this year.’ Coach Dennis (Swart) realized that and he pushed us so much harder this year."
Kaiser’s winning team included Kai Murray-Pasion (22nd), Hanna Heiss (24th) and Allyson Matsuoka (31st).
Radford won the boys title with 68 points after four of its runners finished in the top 20. Cameron Dapkins finished eighth in 17:12.88, followed by Carlos Rodriguez (ninth, 17:16.92) and Owen Woelper (10th, 17:20.73). Freshmen Garvin Chilton and Jacob Boros finished 20th and 21st to give Radford its first team championship since 2002. Also on the Rams’ winning team were Riley Turk (34th) and Brice Namnama (39th). Campbell was second with 87 points.
