Crescenta Valley stays on top

LOS ANGELES — Doubt in regards to the Crescenta Valley High girls’ cross-country team’s reign atop the Pacific League was in abundance when rival Arcadia won the season’s first league meet.

Thus, on Thursday afternoon at Griffith Park, with Falcons junior Claudia Pham out of the race and on the sidelines injured, to many it may very well have signaled the end to the Falcons’ reign.

But once more it was Crescenta Valley that finished as league champions with sophomore Brooke Moultrie leading the way with a second-place finish and, in particular, senior Eliza Collison clutching up to give the Falcons five top-12 finishers and a narrow 40-42 win over the Apaches at the league finals for a seventh straight crown.

“I thought we could squeak by without [Pham] and we did,” said Evans, who didn’t want to push Pham, who’s suffering from an unspecified foot injury, with the CIF postseason around the corner. “It gave the other girls a chance to step up.

“If we ran the way we were capable of running, I saw us winning it.”

Arcadia’s Catrina McAlister won the individual crown, snapping the Falcons’ streak of five straight victors, with a dominating run of 17 minutes 34 seconds.

Moultrie continued her ascension and improvement with a run of 18:48.

Going into the meet knowing Pham, who has routinely been the team’s No. 1 or No. 2 runner, would not be competing, Moultrie said the team’s mindset was a rather simple one.

“Just that we’re gonna have to pick it up and work as a team — we just had to step it up,” said Moultrie who clearly did her part. “I was pretty happy with [my performance].”

Trailing behind Moultrie was Burroughs’ Monique Martinez, who finished third in 18:51, just ahead of Burbank’s McKenzie Paul, who took fourth in 18:57. Burbank took third with 73 points to Burroughs’ 95, though.

Freshman Cali King (fifth, 19:17) was the next to stride to the finish for Crescenta Valley, but Arcadia had its next two finishers cross before Crescenta Valley. But down the final stretch, Collison (10th, 19:56), Anneke Kakebeen (11th, 19:57) and Ali Johnson (12th, 19:58), packed together, ran to the finish to clinch the slimmest of victories.