LCHS Wins First Place in Regional Triathlon

La Cañada High School earned top marks in the inaugural year of the South West High School Triathlon Conference, grabbing a first-place award in division two, according to Lavamagazine.com.

In a recent article, La Cañada is named along with Northern California's Point Arena High School for first place in division one. The Spartans also scored the All-Conference trophy, Friday's article states.

The conference just finished its first season with more than 16 high school triathlon teams from California competing, a positive sign for making triathlon a high school sport.

In December 2011, Ironman triathlete Mark Mason launched the South West High School Triathlon Conference in California. He contacted every triathlon club and high school in California looking for teams, and/or helping high school athletes put together teams at their high schools to compete in his league, according to Lava magazine. He then split up the state into two divisions, one for the southern part of the state and the other for the northern. He added a third division for Arizona, and a fourth for Nevada.

Next, Mason contacted all of the college and universities in the state, as well as the  WCCTC (West Coast College triathlon conference), adding a ‘’high school division’’ and registration discounts for the high school teams to compete at all of the college triathlon races.

“The colleges welcomed us with open arms,'' he told Lava magazine. "It was a win-win situation: The kids loved touring the colleges and racing and the colleges now have a place to recruit future triathletes to their schools. We’ve been signing up new high school teams for next year’s season and are expecting to have close to 50 high school triathlon teams.”

Some of the other high school triathlon teams that did very well this first season were Holy Family High School in Glendale, Mater Dei in Santa Ana, Bright Star Second Charter Academy in Los Angeles, Santa Monica High School, Cal Poly High School in Long Beach, San Marcos High School in Santa Barbara and Linden High School in Linden.

All the kids from all the schools did an incredible job swimming, biking and running, he said.

Was your child involved with this team? If you have any photos, please upload them here. 

To learn more about this High School triathlon league or to sign your school up for next year please visit www.highschooltri.com.