Daily Journal 2026 Boys’ Track Athlete of the Year: Westmoor’s Benicio Labuguen

The routine proved the stuff of champions as Labuguen shot to No. 1 with a bullet with his last triple jump of the day, Saturday, May 30, at Gilroy High School.

“Sometimes it’s in the air, sometimes it’s right when I get over the pit,” Labuguen said. “But then this one, I just need to land and see what happens.”

Labuguen rocked a personal record triple jump of 48 feet, 7 1/2 inches to rise to the the top of the podium with a CCS championship. Not only was it the best jump of the senior’s career, it was the second-best triple jump in CCS this century, tied for the 24th best in CCS all-time, and third best in Peninsula Athletic League history.

“I 100% always expected this to happen,” Labuguen said. “My first year jumping, it was a slow process just to get back to 43 (feet). So, I jumped 43 my first meet, then after that I couldn’t touch 43 until like April (2024). The season started in February, I couldn’t touch it until April. And I just trusted my training, trusted my coach, and was jumping like 42 highs at CCS that sophomore year.”

Playing the long game

Less is more. That’s long been the secret Westmoor head coach Ron DiMaggio has employed to get Labuguen into peak form for the postseason.

“From Day One, I limited his number of jumps,” DiMaggio said. “And he follows the plan and never questions it.”

Throughout his senior season, Labuguen wasn’t allowed to jump more than four times at a given meet. This came at a cost. While he was routinely winning PAL and regional meets, two of the biggies — the Stanford Invite and the Arcadia Invitational — were his two most lackluster finishes of the regular season.

He just reached the podium in fifth place at Stanford with a top jump of 45-2 1/4. Then in his first trip ever to the statewide meet in Arcadia, he settled for 12th place, jumping a lowly 44-5 1/2.

But even then, Labuguen knew he was on a championship trajectory. Even when he’d get antsy and want to attempt more jumps, he’d abide by DiMaggio’s blueprint, knowing every competitive jumper only has a certain number of jumps in them in a given season.

“To be honest, I just trust that he knows what he’s doing,” Labuguen said. “There’s been times I want to jump more, but then I know that I would burn out at the end of the season if I even tried to do that. So, it just pays off — patience.”

Even at the CCS championships, Labuguen had to employ such patience. Triple jump wasn’t the only event he competed in that day. During the boys’ long jump earlier in the day, the senior was in contention. In fact, with his second jump he hit 21-10 3/4, good enough to get him onto the podium in fifth-place position.

Could he have climbed higher on the podium in long jump? Probably. But, with his focus on triple jump, he retired from the long jump pit after said second attempt, settling for fifth place in the final standings with triple jump on his mind.

“Some coaches said: “Well, how come he’s only taken two?’” DiMaggio said. “And I said: ‘Well, his best event’s the triple.’ ... I said: ‘This is our focus, this is our dream.’ And just followed through.”

Diamond in the rough

Just like Bo knows football, DiMaggio knows triple jump. Well, through 49 years running the Westmoor track and cross country programs, it’s safe to say DiMaggio knows track through and through. As it applies to Labuguen, though, it didn’t take the veteran coach long to identify the upside.

It took DiMaggio witnessing just one triple jump to know Labuguen had found his niche. It was the end of the upstart track athlete’s freshman year, and, while he had focused on long jump and sprinting, he had never tried triple jump. That changed when Westmoor was working overtime during a postseason practice by virtue of Labuguen’s casual curiosity.

“I was finished with my frosh-soph final, I was like: ‘You know what? Let me try triple,’” Labuguen said. “And then coach was like: ‘That’s going to be your event! You’re going to be a triple jumper! You’re going to be a long jumper next year!’”

“He was a decent long jumper, but I just figured ... with the pop and the intelligence, this is going to be a jump for him,” DiMaggio said.

Since the spring of 2023, Labuguen has developed that simple curiosity into a vast understanding of the science of triple jump.

“He just knows the angle,” DiMaggio said. “I’ve never had a jumper that knows where his body should be during each phase. He knows the angle of his knee, he knows what he should push off in each phase, and you can see him knowing: ‘I should be this way on my step, then my hop, then my step and then my jump.’ And you can notice him at the end, he’s always reaching, bringing through it, finishing his jumps.”

Competing at the next level

Labuguen is now slated to become the latest in a line of recent Westmoor track athletes to compete at the NCAA Division I level, as he will head to UC Santa Barbara in the fall. Middle distance standout Kylie Goo, a 2013 Westmoor grad, competed at Northern Arizona University. Julian Eison, a 2004 Westmoor grad, went on to UC Irvine, where he tied the program’s men’s high jump record, which he still shares with Jon Wratten to this day.

At the community college level, Ericka Dorn, a 2024 Westmoor grad, is a two-time Northern California champion in the women’s 1,500 meters, and added Nor Cal championship in the 800 to her trophy case this season.

DiMaggio has an interesting theory as to why the great run of track athletes at Westmoor — the school does not have a football program.

“It just seems with the type of athlete we get at Westmoor, that type of kid, we don’t have football, so we don’t have that burst of speed,” DiMaggio said. “We have the highly intelligent kids who can do the technique events.”

Labuguen said Westmoor’s secret is generational, with those who came before returning to campus to pass on what they know, and those in Labuguen’s shoes vowing to do the same.

“We’re a public school, we don’t get much funding,” Labuguen said. “We just get as much help from our family as possible, our community. That’s what helps us. And we just get talent.”