Canyon Crest's Carlie Dorostkar outlasted another San Diego standout to win Girls DI. (Frank Bellino photo)
The San Diego Section was well represented among the girls, where three of the top eight and five of the top 16 teams scored in merged results came from the SDS. That's out of 98 scored teams among the 104 competing at the meet.
Individually, San Diego girls went 1-2-5 overall in merged scoring with three more among the top 22 out of the 1,698 who finished the 3-mile race across all divisions.
Leading the way was Canyon Crest Academy junior Carlie Dorostkar, who held off a challenge from Sage 
Creek junior Skyler Wallace in an all-San Diego battle to win the Senior/Invitational Girls race. Dorostkar, who was 10th as a sophomore, turned a 22-second year-over-year drop into a 16:49.3 victory so special that she grabbed the finish line ribbon and proudly took it with her.
"This is a reflection of my training; I've been pushing a lot harder this year," Dorostkar said. "I'm super proud of it. Last year I had no idea I could go 17:11. That was such a surprise to me. But now I have confidence like, 'Yeah, I can do 16:49!' OK."
Wallace crossed second in 16:52.9, nearly a 38-second drop from her 16th-place finish here as a sophomore. Wallace's sister, Stormy Wallace, placed fifth in 17:21.5 and was the fasted freshman on the course in merged results, fifth overall.
"I mainly stayed behind (Dorostkar) because I know that she's a great runner," Skyler Wallace said. "We stuck together the whole race and pushed each other. I tried to push it the last down hill with like (0.7) to go but she had a great kick and out-kicked me at the end. Overall, a great race."
San Clemente junior Hana Catsimanes was third (17:01.6) and Santa Ana junior Maria Hernandez was fourth 17:16.9. The top senior was Newport Harbor's Mia Matsunami, who was 13th (17:52.5). In the merged results, the next placing freshman was Emmi Von Scherr from La Quinta, who won the Division I Freshman race in 17:58.3, which ranked 21st overall.
Dorostkar has placed 6th and 4th in the San Diego Section finals each of the last two years and advanced to State. Last week she ran second to La Costa Canyon's Kristin Fahy at the Mt. Carmel Invitational held at Morley Field.
She credited her competition with Wallace for helping her improvement.
"It was great having Skyler with me. She pushes me a lot," Dorostkar said. "I've raced against her plenty of times. It was good for her to be right there with me. 'I gotta get away. I gotta go.' So I kept pushing it and pushing it."
Dorostkar said learning to race Wallace during FS 3200s on the track taught her a lot.
"We were really racing then and I learned how to race with her at that time, just sticking on her," Dorostkar said.
"She's made me a lot better. She made me better at running the 2-mile for sure."
Wallace said that over the years, she and Dorostkar have gone back and forth who was winning more.
"We're definitely close competitors," Wallace said. "I hope that we can both push each other to run faster times."
El Toro topped Great Oak, 49-51, to win the Senior/Invitational division. El Toro got five of the top 23 overall and five of the top 14 among scoring teams.
Junior Alexis Neuville led the way, placing seventh in 17:33.5. Junior Grace Griffin was next, placing 13th (17:55.5), followed by senior Taylor Slouka in 20th (18:02.8), freshman Kasey Lynd in 22nd (18:03.6) and junior Jessica Martinez in 23rd (18:07.0). Martinez finished ahead of Great Oak's Nos. 4 and 5 scorers, junior Ivey Johnson (24th, 18:08.5) and senior Brianna Lucas (26th, 18:11.8)
El Toro had a 17:56 average, a 5:58 mile average and 0:33 1-5 gap.
The top-placing girl overall not in the Senior/Invitational race was Capistrano Valley junior
Carly Corsinita, who won the Division II Junior Girls race in 17:39.6, the eighth-fastest time overall. Not too shabby considering she said she's nursing a hamstring injury that has limited her practice time.
"I've been really conservative in practice, (and) try to take all of that energy I would be spending in workouts and try to apply it to races and gauge it based on how I feel," she said. "I don't want to make it any worse.
"Going into Woodbridge, I had sprinted that entire week in practice at all, so I was definitely kind of nervous going into that. My confidence was a little shaky. But I'm happy right here, it's definitely feeling better over the last three days, especially. So, that's really good going forward."
Year-over-year at Woodbridge, Corsinita improved by 47 seconds and 40 places.
Corsinita, who was 17th at State last November, is now the leader of a Capo Valley squad that lost two accomplished runners to graduation, Haley Herberg (now at Oklahoma) and Alyssa Bautista (UCLA). Those two went 1-4 at State as Capo Valley placed fourth overall as a team. Corsinita is the No. 8 returner from the DII State final and No. 2 among sophomores.
"It's definitely been a big challenge for us," Corsinita said of the adjustment without those two sage veterans. "We know how much they brought to the team, how much they helped us all become better runners. Fortunately, when they left, they left behind a team that knows how to win."