Twice as nice: Crystal girls and boys repeat as Division V state cross country champs

“We can’t replace those two runners,” Crystal assistant coach Andy Martinez said, “but collectively we have to get better as a team.”

Well, get better the Gryphons did. Crystal’s return to Woodward Park for the CIF state cross country championships Saturday was twice as nice, in rising above the small-school field throughout California to repeat as team champions in both the boys’ and girls’ Division V races.

“It’s been really amazing,” Crystal junior Benjamin Bouie said. “It always feels familiar and similar, but the results that you get keep improving as you keep training, as you keep getting better and better. … Honestly, even just the culture of the team. We’re such a close group of friends. But to see us improving as a team on the results, and also improving as a group of people, a group of friends, is great.”

Bouie was in contention for an individual title, claiming second place in the boys’ Division V race with a time of 15 minutes, 4.6 seconds. Only Woodcrest Christian junior Eyan Turk was faster, taking the individual championship in 14:59.2, one of just 11 runners through divisions I to V to finish under the 15-minute mark.

The top five boys’ finishers in the team element for Crystal included junior Tarik Baker (seventh, 15:34.8); senior Dean Wu (29th, 16:30.5); junior Oliver Boesch (30th, 16:30.7); and senior Matthew Morris (44th, 16:50.4).

“Our coach told us: ‘Be confident, not cocky,’” Bouie said. “‘Be confident in all you’ve done and all the training that you’ve put in. The hay is in the barn, just go and be you, but don’t get cocky.’ You’re not promised anything, especially in this sport. So, I think there was definitely a target on our back, from other teams and from ourselves wanting to hold up what we did last year. But I think we did a great job managing that, and not getting too stressed out about that.”

In the girls’ race, Crystal, remarkably, won the team title on a tiebreaker without any of its runners cracking the top 10 individually. Sophomore Anna Salter was the Gryphons’ top finisher, placing 11th overall in 18:46.7.

When the dust settled, though, Crystal finished with 97 team points, the same total as Immanuel-Reedley. With the top five finishers of each team deadlocked, the tiebreaker relied on the sixth, where Crystal senior Maya Wohl — the girls’ team’s only senior — emerged as the unlikely heroine, delivering the team championship with a time of 19:51.6, just under five seconds faster than Immanuel’s sixth finisher, freshman Ainsley Jackson, in 19:56.4.

Wohl helped bring home the team title last season as Crystal’s fourth finisher. This year, she didn’t finish in the top five in any of the Gryphons’ races all season. Despite this, she improved on her time from last year’s state championship performance by 25.3 seconds.

“Honestly, I wasn’t as nervous about as seeing the score as I thought I would be,” Wohl said, “because everyone gave their absolute maximum effort today. So, I was more proud of everyone instead of caring about how we placed. As long as we gave it a championship effort, I’d be so proud of the team.”

Crystal’s top five girls’ finishers included a quartet of underclassmen, freshman Allie Willis (18th, 19:33.4); sophomore Heidy Avina (19th, 19:34.6); freshman Liliana Kaludzinski (24th, 19:45.8); and sophomore Kira Dye (26th, 19:46.9).

While the weather in Fresno was bright and sunny, morning time at Woodward Park was cold, cold, cold. With the boys’ Division V race opening the meet, Crystal lined up at the starting line at 8:30 a.m. with temperatures in the low 40s.

Adding to the morning chill was a frigid outset, as there was a false start at the opening gun, forcing the boys’ Division V field to return to the starting line. It was the second time in Bouie’s career this has happened at the state championships, as the race also began with a false start his freshman year in 2021.

When Bouie was a freshman, predicting Crystal’s future success was impossible. He said he remembers simply being grateful to York School-Monterey runner Michael Julien — now running at UC San Diego — for cracking a joke about the restart a way of needing to make things interesting. The sardonic joke helped loosen up the young, nervous freshman Bouie.

“My freshman year I had no idea,” Bouie said. “I was a baby. I was definitely very nervous, very scared. I had never even run cross country before. … So, the size of the entire race and everything was just incredible to me. So, I had no idea. But it’s great — great to see this come to fruition.”

Perhaps the boys’ championship was most meaningful to Morris, one of just four seniors on the boys’ varsity team. Last year, he missed the top-five cut in the team element at the state championships, as the sixth finisher for the Gryphons. It was a valiant effort, seeing as he had only been back with the team for one week after a positive COVID diagnosis took a bite out of his 2022 postseason.

In completing Saturday’s race as the Gryphons’ fifth finisher, Morris was all smiles.

“Honestly, it was great,” Morris said. “I just remember catching up and running with a couple people I was racing against the entire season, and kind of made my moves. And I think it was a really, really well executed race.”

He said moving up from the sixth to fifth finisher to contribute to this year’s state championship is a big deal.

“It’s really a big deal,” Morris said. “I’m really proud of my effort overall.”

Caruana raved about this year’s sum-of-its-parts Crystal team. More so, he was in awe of the radiant vibe, sans any trace of ego, all his runners exhibited this season, especially Saturday morning at Woodward Park.

“We’re at the state championship,” Caruana said, “and they’re just having the time of their life.”