The Newark Middle School’s boys’ cross-country team won the Southern Alameda County Middle Athletic League (SACMAL) championship for the first time in 10 years.
The SACMAL league includes 11 middle schools, which span from Castro Valley, San Leandro, San Lorenzo, Union City and Newark.
With the cross-country season only beginning in August, the team only had a few months to work on their endurance. There are a total of four meets in the cross-country season. In the first three meets, the races are divided by grade level, with sixth, seventh and eighth graders running with each other.
The championship is set up differently. “[For championship], each team chooses their top eight [runners]; the top five boys in each school are the ones that score,” said Eduardo Fonseca, NMS’s athletic director and cross-country coach.
The top eight boys that were selected for the meet included: eighth graders Nathaniel Pereira, Sebastian Ramirez, Kenny Woore, Caleb Lin, Gregory Faraji; seventh graders Landon Snow, Zachary Young and the team’s sole sixth grader Kevin Martinez.
“Kevin initially didn’t really want to do the varsity race,” said Fonseca. “He was nervous having to go against eighth graders, so we kind of had to talk him into it and just explain how the scoring works and explain how much it would help the team. Eventually he agreed to it. And he placed eight overall.”
The SACMAL cross-country championship took place on Oct. 14, on the team’s home turf at Newark Middle School.
As the runners of all 11 middle schools pushed toward the finish line, Newark’s runners emerged as some of the first to finish.
The first of the Newark boys to cross the finish line was Kenny Woore coming in fourth with a mile time of 5:36. Following Woore was Sebastian Ramirez at 5:41, taking sixth place overall. In eighth, ninth and tenth place was a wave of Newark boys: Martinez, Snow and Pereira. With impressive finishing times, the team was able to claim the league championship.
“Our top five boys were all in the top 10. It was impressive how they all came in right behind each other,” said Fonseca. “It was a pretty decisive win.”
