Woodside in running for Peninsula Athletic League cross country titles

The cross country season is entering its final stretch with the PAL cross country championships scheduled Saturday at the Crystal Springs Cross Country Course in Belmont and Woodside is coming in looking to make some serious noise. The Wildcats have contenders for not only boys’ and girls’ individual titles, but Central Coast Section crowns as well.

The Woodside boys’ team is especially formidable this season, one that head coach Al Hernandez calls himself “lucky” to have.

“Right now, on paper, we should win the PAL handily,” said Hernandez, adding his team is ranked No. 1 in the CCS Division II ranking. Lynbrooksports.com.prepcaltrack.com, which compiles high school cross country results from around the state, has the Wildcats ranked fifth, overall, in the CCS.

The CCS championships are scheduled for Nov. 13 at Crystal Springs.

“We have, what I like to call, our ‘Big Horsemen’ up top,” Hernandez continued. “My other two, three guys all come in within 20 seconds.

“If you can have all your runners within a minute-and-a-half of each other, you’re really good.”

The Wildcats are led by Ethan Brooks, who Hernandez said will battle with Carlmont’s Aidan Dimick for PAL and CCS supremacy.

“The race in boys’ varsity is between Brooks and Dimick,” Hernandez said. “It’s been flip flopped (between them this season). They’ve beat each other twice.”

Max Hohendor and Nayan Smuek give the Wildcats two more top-15 finishers in PAL races and the back of the team gives Woodside a chance to complete a turnaround that began when Hernandez took over the program four years ago.

On the girls’ side, Elle Marsyla joins Brooks as a contender for league and section titles. Marsyla won the first two PAL meets — the first at the Half Moon Bay course and second at the Bayfront course at Bedwell Park in Redwood City. Hernandez said she is just one of just a handful of girls in the section running races in the low 18-minutes.

Challenging Marsyla, however, is essentially the Menlo-Atherton team. Marsyla may have won the first two PAL races, but M-A had the next six finishers in the first PAL race and the next three runners in race No. 2.

“M-A has a lot of depth,” Hernandez said, making the Bears the favorite to win the PAL girls’ title.

But Marsyla has been consistently 15 to 20 seconds faster than her PAL counterparts this season.

While the PAL championships will crown individual winners, there are team points and a PAL team title still at stake as well. Because the third PAL meet of the season was canceled because of the rains the last couple of weeks, that puts more emphasis on the PAL championship meet, where the points are double. The Woodside boys come into championship week atop the PAL standings, four points ahead of both Mills and Sequoia. Perennial PAL contender Carlmont is surprisingly low in the standings, coming in ninth place.

On the girls’ side, Menlo-Atherton, Aragon and Carlmont will duke it out for the team title. They are separated by a total of five points.

While the racing begins at 10:30 a.m. with the junior varsity girls’ race, there will be a memorial at 10 a.m. for longtime Aragon coach and cross country icon Bill Daskarolis, who passed away in late September. Daskarolis was an important member of the cross country community, especially here in San Mateo County. His influence was so great, he was inducted into the Crystal Springs Cross Country Hall of Fame in 1996.

WBAL championships Friday

It’s a busy week at the Crystal Springs Cross Country Course with six league championship meets taking place at the Belmont course.

The WBAL will crown its individual and team champions Friday on the 2.95-mile course with the Menlo School and Crystal Springs Uplands School boys’ team battling for individual and team titles.

Menlo’s Pretre brothers, junior Justin and freshman Landon — both following in the footsteps of graduated sister Kyra Pretre — are among the favorites for the WBAL boys’ individual title. Justin Pretre has won both WBAL races this season, while Landon Pretre has a fifth-place and second-place finish.

Crystal Springs will counter with a pair of freshmen who have consistent top-10 finishes this year. Benjamin Bouie finished second in the first WBAL meet of the year and third in the second race. Tarik Baker was fifth in that second race at Baylands.

While Bouie and Baker may be off the pace of winning individual titles, they certainly can help the Gryphons to a team title.

The race for the WBAL girls’ team title is a battle between three teams: Castilleja, Sacred Heart Prep and with an outside shot, Menlo School.

Individually, it appears to be a race between Castilleja’s Perry McElhinney and Crystal Springs’ Kaiya Brooks. McElhinney has won both WBAL races this season, but both runners are two of but a handful of runners posting sub-19-minute races.

Rogers wins WCAL title

Serra’s Tommy Rogers put together a regular season that made him one of the contender for the West Catholic Athletic League crown.

Wednesday, he turned that potential into reality, capturing the WCAL title by posting a time of 15:20.7 on the 2.95-mile Crystal Springs Cross Country Course.

Rogers’ time was more than nine seconds faster than the time of second-place finisher Ryunosuke Yanashito of Bellarmine, who finished in a time of 15:29.9.

Jadon Tapp gave Serra second, top-10 finish as he finished in 10th place with a time of 16:27.4.

Bellarmine came away with the team title, followed by St. Francis and Mitty. Serra finished fourth in the final WCAL team standings.