Two false starts to begin the OIA boys cross country championship was fairly unusual.

The conclusion, though, was pretty familiar.

For the eighth straight year, Leilehua finished atop the team standings, as senior Christopher Olverson led a 1-2-3 finish for the Mules on Saturday.

After the runners were twice called back to the starting line, Olverson covered the hilly, 3-mile course at Hawaii Pacific University’s Hawaii Loa Campus in 16 minutes, 44.44 seconds and was followed by teammates Jordan Castro (16:53.87) and Dylan Martinez (17:00.21).

"Every day is a race with us," Olverson said, referring to the Mules’ training sessions that pushed them to another crown.

Their finishes helped the Mules pull away from second-place Pearl City in the team standings in finishing with 70 points to the Chargers’ 93.

Pearl City junior Maile Shigemasa won the girls race with a time of 20:03.07 and the OIA awarded co-team champions for the first time in league history, with Leilehua and Roosevelt finishing atop the standings with 72 points each. The finish gave Leilehua its second straight OIA girls championship, while Roosevelt won its first since taking back-to-back titles in 1997 and ’98.

"It was a tough course, so you had to train hard," Roosevelt coach Gordon Ota said. "We worked a lot of hills, so it paid off for us."

The hills on HPU’s campus in Kaneohe were the distinguishing feature of the course, particularly an uphill stretch on the back of the layout that runners climbed three times during the races.

"You have to take everything when it comes at you," Olverson said. "That’s a good hill. You just push through it because you have a bunch of downhill to account for it."

Olverson, who won the OIA West title on Oct. 6 at Waialua, opened up a slim lead on his first lap and steadily widened the margin, leading by about 10 seconds by the time he headed for the final stretch.

Leilehua coach Shawn Nakata noted Castro’s effort as he battled back from a shin injury to place second.

"To see him run today like that was a surprise for us and we’re very happy," Nakata said. "(Finishing) 1-2-3, that’s special because there’s a lot of good runners."

In the girls race, Shigemasa led for much of the first two laps, but had fallen back to second behind Radford’s Tandeka Nunn with about a mile to go. But she summoned a final burst to pull away down the stretch and finish more than 14 seconds ahead of runner-up Alea Amano of Kaiser.

"I just went for it and adrenaline kicked in," said Shigemasa, who was fifth in last year’s OIA championship and third in this season’s OIA West championship.

"Last year I thought I had a good chance of winning it, but I had a really bad flu, and I wanted to go for it this year."

Roosevelt’s Tamako Delfino finished third to help the Rough Riders claim a share of the team title, while Leilehua placed three runners in the top eight in Brooklin Jensen (fifth), Michaela Ross (sixth) and Mary Eccles (eighth).

The runners will next reset their focus for another set of hills as they gear up for the Honolulu Marathon/HHSAA Cross Country Championship set for Friday at Hawaii Preparatory Academy on Hawaii island.