El Camino's Noe Diep trying to make most of cross country season

So it was no surprise that the 2019 Central Coast Section Division III champion posted the fastest time when the Colts hosted Menlo-Atherton Wednesday afternoon on a course mapped out around Sierra Point in Brisbane.

Diep covered the 3-mile course in a time of 18:47, holding off M-A’s Claire Beebe, who finished with a mark of 19:27.

“I’m glad Claire was there,” said Cliff Lentz, El Camino cross country coach. “Beebe is probably top-5 in the league right now and Noe is just at another level.”

M-A’s Katriona Briggs was the only other girls’ runner to break the 20-minute mark, finishing with a time of 19:33.

To put Diep’s time in perspective, at the 2019 state championships where she finished 17th, Diep covered the 3.1-mile course at Fresno’s Woodward Park in 18:31.

“She felt great. This has been her first competition since a track meet about a year ago,” Lentz said. “I would say she was excited to be able to compete. She had been training so hard all these months. Since the pandemic started, she hasn’t really taken any time off and it’s really shown.

“Her strength and speed have improved considerably and she is ready to take her running to the next level. She just needs to do the running to do it.”

With no postseason dangling at the end of the season to motivate her, Diep will have to find the self-motivation to continue to put up the times that has seen her develop into a legitimate Division I college runner. Lentz said programs such as Stanford, Oregon and Georgetown have expressed interest in the junior and she’ll need to continue to post good times to keep that interest high.

“She’s a diamond in the rough. She doesn’t have a long history of running,” Lentz said. Diep didn’t start running cross country until her freshmen year of high school as she considered herself a soccer player who would use cross country to keep in shape.

But she has certainly made a name for herself in a short amount of time. She finished second at CCS Division III race in 2018 with a time of 19:49. At the state meet that year, she finished 31st in the DIII race, running a 19:16.

Injuries slowed her ascent sophomore year, but Diep peaked at the right time, capturing the 2019 CCS DIII title and improving to 17th place at the state meet.

With a spot on a college team being a legitimate goal, her times during this truncated season and her senior year later this fall will be crucial.

“These times are really important. That’s the indicator you send out to university coaches,” Lentz said. “I think (Wednesday’s race is) a really good first start. But if she gets an opportunity to run with her peers, then I think the times would drop drastically.”

On the boys’ side, M-A’s Lars Osterberg earned his second victory in as many races, covering the Sierra Point 3-mile course in 16:53, averaging about just over 5:30 a mile.

In last week’s 2.13-mile win on the M-A campus course, Osterberg ran 11:27, averaging 5:12 per mile.

Teammate Will Dennis finished second for the second week in a row, coming in with a 17:35 in the 3-mile course. John Harrison-Lin and James Hoddie were the other two M-A runners to crack the 20-minute mark, finishing with times of 19:51 and 19:54, respectively.

Wednesday marked the second straight week in which a venue was used for the first time. M-A and Half Moon Bay ran on the M-A course for the first time in 30 years, while M-A and El Camino were running at Sierra Point for the first time ever.

Lentz, who is a member of a local running club and who mapped out the course for Wednesday’s race, said it wasn’t too difficult. Having worked to produce the Brisbane 5K race, Lentz simply converted the road course to a cross country course.

“All the running was done on sidewalks, the Bay trail and the parking lot,” Lentz said.

The finishing straight away went right along the Sierra Point Marina, giving the runners a beautiful view as they approached the finish line.

“It’s a hidden gem,” Lentz.

Ultimately, Lentz would love to run a high school race on the course he helped design and build, a course built for cross country running.

“Preferably, I’d like to do it on San Bruno Mountain. It’s the most awesome course,” Lentz said.

It hasn’t been used for high school events previously because it could not accommodate the hundreds of runners that usually compete in meets before the pandemic.

But with the Peninsula Athletic League implementing a dual-meet setup this season in which only two teams run, Lentz believes using San Bruno Mountain could be conceivable.

“I’m still keeping my fingers crossed,” Lentz said. “Just doing dual meets, (using San Bruno Mountain) might be doable.”