Daily Journal Athlete of the Week: Nueva’s Ryan Fitzpatrick

Ryan Fitzpatrick is off and running.

The Nueva School senior opened his 2025 boys’ cross-country season Saturday by taking second place in the finale race at the Lowell Invitational race in Golden Gate Park. Fitzpatrick was in fine form, recording a time of 13 minutes, 52.5 seconds on the 2.83-mile course, finishing just 2 1/2 seconds behind reigning CIF Division I state champion Conor Lott of Clovis North.

“I’m happy with the time more than the placement,” Fitzpatrick said. “I would have liked to win it. I was second last year too, but it was much stronger field. ... If I’m going to lose, losing to the DI state champ is the person to lose to.”

With one race in the books, Fitzpatrick has been named Daily Journal Athlete of the Week as he starts a season with high expectations riding on him.

The reigning two-time Private School Athletic League championship has been the top runner in his class in Central Coast Section Division V during that stretch, but two greats who are a year older than him, Crystal graduate Benjamin Bouie and Menlo School graduate Landon Pretre, dominated the small-school division in 2023 and ’24.

“It’s definitely going to be strange running in CCS without them there because that class has kind of been a constant presence throughout my last three years of cross country,” Fitzpatrick said. “It will definitely be interesting to see how the rankings at the top are shaken up by them leaving. I think there’s a lot of opportunities for new faces to emerge.”

This season, the expectation is those new faces will look to Fitzpatrick the way the Nueva standout looked to Bouie and Pretre in years past.

“Even though he’s been a little bit short, it’s motivated to keep him going, and this year he’s coming in locked and loaded,” Nueva head coach Robert Lopez said. “So, I think he’s ready. I think he’s ready to compete at the highest level.”

Fitzpatrick executed a strategically designed race plan Saturday, and a unique one at that. While Nueva had 21 runners competing in the four various boys’ levels at the Lowell Invite, the Mavericks did not run a full team in the Varsity Boys 2 race, as they have just two upperclassmen on roster.

Lopez was insistent to utilize his runners in their specific grade-based races. So, only two runners participated at the varsity level, Fitzpatrick and junior Jonathan Ho. This won’t be the case this Friday when Nueva opens its league schedule at the PSAL #1 meet, as there is a pool of 16 freshmen from which to promote to varsity — this from a school of just over 400 overall students.

“For a lot of years, we had a huge influx of girls every year and very few boys,” Lopez said. “So, this year it’s quite the opposite. We had just a handful of girls that came in this year and just a huge freshman class (of boys).”

Fitzpatrick is now the “old man” on Nueva’s roster, and he’s already leading by example.

While the Lowell Invite was run at a slightly shorter distance this year — in 2024, the sinewing course through Golden Gate park measured 2.88 miles, compared to 2.83 this season — Fitzpatrick’s time was markedly better, an improvement of over 20 seconds from his second-place time of 14:13.6 as a junior.

Fitzpatrick has made other massive leaps in his career. As a freshman, he recorded a 4:29 mile, a full minute faster than his 5:30 personal record in the mile as an eighth-grader, Lopez said.

“It’s been a process because I don’t think when he came to us, in his wildest dreams, he ever thought he’d be where he is now,” Lopez said.

Saturday, Fitzpatrick got out to a fast start from the opening gun, leading the race for approximately 400 meters before dropping back to draft at the front of the pack for the opening mile. Then, in the second mile, he started letting it out to take the lead, and a substantial one at that.

“I felt like last year I didn’t really push enough, so I was leading for most of the second mile,” Fitzpatrick said, “and I think that really helped me tire out most of the other runners in the race and give myself a better position going into the last .8.”

Over the final eight-tenths of a mile, Lott moved into the lead and maintained it. Fitzpatrick, though, gave the reigning Division I state champ — who won the race in 13:50 flat — a run for his money.

“We got to race against the DI state champ and he was right there,” Lopez said. “And for an opening-day meet, to run that fast, I think he’s ready for a special year.”