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Westmoor cross country coach Ron DiMaggio Sr. at the medals table on the infield of Jane Powell Stadium during the 43rd Annual Ram Invitational Saturday in Daly City.
The 43rd Annual Ram Invitational opened with what Westmoor cross country coach Ron DiMaggio Sr. called an old-school Kodak moment.
In the first of 14 events on the day, two Westmoor alums — husband and wife Nicole Novales and Kurt Ison — finished the Coaches and Alumni race hand-in-hand as they cross the finish line. Novales is a 2010 graduate of the Daly City public high school, while Ison graduated in 2011. The two met running cross country and track for the Rams, and eloped two years ago, DiMaggio Sr. said.
“It’s the way it’s supposed to be,” DiMaggio Sr. said. “Some kids who ran in high school, got turned on to running, through running they met really good kids and their personalities just clicked. It’s just fun to see that.”
DiMaggio Sr.’s wife of 54 years, Charlene, has worked the event side-by-side with her husband since the meet was founded in 1982.
Terry Bernal/Daily Journal
Love has been in the air on the Westmoor track since the inception of the Ram Invitational in 1982. DiMaggio Sr. founded the popular cross-country meet, and has run it alongside his wife of 54 years, Charlene, since that inaugural year when just 12 schools participated.
Now, in 2025, there are 71 schools from around the Bay Area, with over 2,000 athletes participating. The DiMaggios now have three children and nine grandchildren, and two of their children were involved in the meet Saturday — oldest son Ron DiMaggio Jr. was coaching his Serra team, while younger son Zack was helping run the meet.
“I think that’s why he keeps doing it,” DiMaggio Jr. said. “He likes all the different schools with all these kids from San Jose to the North Bay running together. It’s cool.”
The family theme doesn’t end with the DiMaggios. Daly City firefighter Ronnie Goo often helps with the meet as a medic, while his wife Jodie Goo has run the concession stand in many years past. Both their daughters, Kylie and Laney Goo, are Westmoor graduates and former runners for DiMaggio Sr.
None of the DiMaggios’ nine grandchildren were in attendance, but they all had good excuses.
“They’re all playing sports,” DiMaggio Sr. said.
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The DiMaggios’ son, Ron DiMaggio Jr., coaches the Serra cross country team Saturday at the meet that was founded when he was 3.
Terry Bernal/Daily Journal
DiMaggio Jr. was born in 1979, and was 3 when his father launched the annual cross-country meet that now spans 2.7 miles around the campus. The course was shorter in 1982, as was the field.
“I did it and I remember the first one there was only 12 schools there ... and it was all old school,” DiMaggio Sr. said. “You gave the kids popsicle sticks and then they had to stand in line until they heard their names.”
But the field has continued to grow, and DiMaggio Sr. has kept to his mission of allowing teams and runners to compete freely in within the 13 high school events, including various races for Frosh, Frosh/Soph, Soph, JV, and Varsity. Whereas many cross-country meets require teams to compete at the varsity level if they want to also run in underclass races, DiMaggio Sr. said the Ram Invite doesn’t have any such guidelines.
“It doesn’t because it doesn’t have to follow the rules,” DiMaggio said. “There isn’t a rule for invitationals.”
Competitiveness isn’t in short supply, by any means. Nueva senior Ryan Fitzgerald proved that by repeating as a Varsity champion in the Boys Varsity 2 race. And while University-San Francisco won the Boys Varsity 1 race as a team with four of its runners finishing in the top seven, University head coach Jack Hunter also won the Coaches and Alumni race with a time of 13 minutes, 40 seconds.
Sabrina Han, a Westmoor graduate, also ran in the Coaches and Alumni race. Han is one of the most competitive runners to ever emerge from Westmoor, as she went on to an All-American distance runner at Cal in 1990, and still holds the Westmoor record in the girls’ one mile and two mile.
Toward the end of Saturday’s meet, DiMaggio Sr. took to the public-address mic to announce proudly Westmoor is already planning the 44th Annual Ram Invitational for October 2026.
“I never imagined that it would blow up the way it’s blown up,” DiMaggio Sr. said.
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