ONTARIO — Going in as the overwhelming favorites was not going to cause Santiago senior Braelyn Combe or King senior Maximo Zavaleta to falter.
Combe won the Brenda Martinez girls sweepstakes and Zavaleta won the Jeff Swigart boys sweepstakes Saturday at the Fleet Feet Inland Empire Challenge at Cucamonga-Guasti Regional Park. The meet only includes schools from Riverside and San Bernardino counties.
This marks the fifth straight year a Santiago girl has won the sweepstakes at the meet, with Combe following four-time champion Rylee Blade.
“It’s cool. I had full confidence in my team that even if I didn’t race, I had full faith that one of my teammates would challenge for the win,” Combe said. “I just feel we’re a deep team like that and I believe in them.”
Combe won in 16 minutes, 21.5 seconds, easily beating out King senior Elizabeth Jacklin, who was second in 16:41.1. Combe did not run in the Inland Empire Challenge last year, but her time was much faster than when she last ran it two years ago and finished second to Blade in 17:12.1.
While Combe won easily, she did have some trouble with the race.
“I made a lot of wrong turns,” Combe admitted. “I thought it would be marked out more. It’s not their fault, it’s mine.”
Santiago also won the team title with 39 points, with its top five runners all finishing in the top 17. The Sharks barely edged out Murrieta Valley (43), which had its top five runners finish among the top 20.
Although she knew she was an underdog, Jacklin didn’t go into the race conceding anything.
“If I wanted to win or even compete against her (Combe), I knew I had to go out at least as hard as I could,” said Jacklin, who was seventh last year. “And just see what happens after that.”
As it turned out, Combe’s teammate who had the best chance to challenge for the title was freshman Addyson Johns.
Johns came off an impressive 14th place finish in the championship race last week at the Clovis Invitational. Saturday, she was third in 17:28.3.
“Before the race, I asked my teammates who already ran, how the course is,” Johns said. “They all loved it. So I came out here excited and confident.”
For Zavaleta, he wasn’t sure he was going to race Saturday until late in the week.
“It was either I didn’t race, or I raced for a reason,” Zavaleta said. “And that reason was to boost our team back up from Clovis, We didn’t have the best performance.
“This meet was supposed to be, I’m sticking with the guys, then the last 1K-ish, we go take it.”
It is the second IE Challenge sweepstakes win for Zavaleta. He won two years ago but finished second to Woodcrest Christian’s Eyan Turk last year.
Zavaleta, fresh off finishing second in the championship race at the Clovis Invitational, won Saturday in 14:22.2. It was faster than he ran last year but not as fast as two years ago.
His victory led King to the team title with 44 points, beating out Ayala (68) which had the second and third-place finishers, sophomores Bryson Caganap (14:38.6) and Jack Paz (14:42.5).
A year ago, Caganap finished third in the race while Paz did not run.
“The game plan today was to try to compete with MLK and Maximo,” Caganap said. “The plan was we were going to take it out steady and stay in the lead pack and just try and pick it up the last two miles. Try to stay within striking range of Maximo.”
