"I love the bell. I got one last year, too, but this one didn't ring," Zadoorian said. "It's always great to win one because everyone else gets medals."
Joining Zadoorian as local winners on the day were the members of the Flintridge Sacred Heart Academy cross-country team, led by Stephanie Vargas, who took first in the Division IV yellow team race.
Zadoorian created separation between himself, Santa Barbara's James Scheuermann (second, 16:48) and Lompoc Cabrillo's Matt Johnson (third, 16:52) on the descent past the switchbacks and increased his lead to about 10 seconds over the cemented crossover.
"After the first mile, I started to pull away," Zadoorian said. "I saw that [Scheuermann] was going fast, but not that fast."
As a team, Hoover claimed fifth place with a time of 1 hour, 29 minutes and 11 seconds.
The Tornadoes scoring five included junior Kenneth Trejo (16th, 17:15), senior Paul Ingram (51st, 18:08), senior Daniel Marin (59th, 18:17) and junior Antranik Tavitian (72nd, 18:48).
While no bell was awarded to Sacred Heart, the Tologs also proved to be champions, winning the Division IV yellow team race in a local-best time of 1:45:29.
Even though runner-up Berkeley St. Mary's ran a slightly better team time of 1:45:12, the Tologs posted a better score, 94-107.
As expected, Tologs' senior Vargas paced her squad by taking fourth overall in a local-best time of 19:45.
"The dust and the sun get to you. You don't really feel the breeze even though everyone tells you there's one," Vargas said.
Sacred Heart placed three runners in the top 10 at the crossover (the official midway point of the race) and eventually finished with two in the top 10, as sophomore Maddie Peterson was 10th (20:39).
"I don't think the pace was too fast for us, we just came out a little too strong," Vargas said, "but we still did really good."
