After a historic North Coast Section (NCS) meet at Hayward High School, Newark Memorial High School, along with other surrounding tri-city area schools traveled to Fresno to compete in the CIF Cross Country State Championship.
Newark Memorial’s head coach Tyler Jorgens, a Cougar alum himself shared, “Over the summer the NCS ranking had both of our teams ranked 7th, but internally we always believed we could be better than that this year.” At the Nov. 23 NCS meet, the team proved that their belief was in fact correct. The boys earned the fourth-place title in the Division 3 three-mile course, while the girls had a historic win being the first Newark girls’ team to qualify for the CIF State Championship. Jorgens added, “The kids really believed from the start that they could compete for a top four spot and qualify to state as a team. They did the work and it really paid off.”
At the Fresno State Championship, the boys’ team claimed the 20th spot while the girls earned the 17th place.
Three runners on the girls’ team were a part of the top 75 runners. Junior, Alice McCarty came in at the 54th spot with 19:01.0, seniors Grace Veloza and Rahwa Fekadu took 60th with 19:04.3 and 75th with 19:21.7, respectively. Kaitlyn Chan was another important piece to the team’s puzzle. As a sophomore, Chan’s 21:01.7 time got her just over the 150 group with her 163rd place rank.
Winning the gold medal at the NCS meet, Kenji Kawabata’s win made for some high expectations at the State Championship, and he did not disappoint. Kawabata earned the 14th spot, clocking in with a time of 15:28.1. Michael Tellez crossed the finish line at 83rd place with 16:14.8. Cruz Villa came in right behind Tellez at 16:15.1. Both students have made a mark of their own. According to Jorgens, Tellez finishes his high school cross country career as the first Newark Memorial student to make it to three cross country State meets, and Villa had his best race to date making him the third fastest freshman at the State Championship.
With so many young runners, the future for Newark Memorial’s cross-country program looks bright. Jorgens shared, “I’m super grateful to our leaders for setting the culture and passing the torch on to the underclassmen. They made sure the team as a whole was ready to perform their best when the pressure was on at NCS and State.”
For a complete list of results, visit https://www.rtspt.com/events/cif/xc2024/mp/
