Siraki Takes National Stage

Anita Siraki will try to become the fourth runner from Hoover High to earn All-American honors when she competes in the national cross-country championships at Oak Trail Course at Shades of Green in Lake Buena Vista, Fla., today.

Siraki, a junior, placed seventh in the West regional championships at Mt. San Antonio College last Saturday to make Hoover one of four Southern Section schools--along with Agoura, Nordhoff and Thousand Oaks--to have qualified four individual runners for the national championships since the meet began in 1979.

But Hoover can become the first to produce four All-Americans if Siraki can attain her goal of a top-15 finish in a race that includes the top eight finishers from the West, Midwest, Northeast and South regionals.

The top five finishers earn first-team All-American honors with the sixth- through 10th-place finishers named to the second team and the 11th-15th selected to the third.

“I’m going for the top 15,” Siraki said. “The other [Hoover runners who qualified for the national championships] each finished that high so that’s what I’m trying to do.”

Eliazar Herrera, Margarito Casillas and David Lopez are the three Hoover runners who advanced to the national championships before this year.

Herrera placed 11th in the 1989 boys’ race, Casillas finished fifth in 1991 and Lopez was 13th in 1996.

Today’s meet, which will be held at Disney’s Wide World of Sports Complex, will be the 12th of the season for Siraki. She won Division I titles in the Southern Section championships at Mt. SAC on Nov. 20 and in the state meet at Woodward Park in Fresno a week later.

Her performance in the section final--when her 16:58 clocking made her only the third girl to break 17 minutes over Mt. SAC’s 2.95-mile course--was the best of her career. But she says she’s capable of a similar effort today.

“My lungs are still sore [from the dusty conditions at the West regional],” she said Tuesday. “But that shouldn’t affect me Saturday.”