Written by Bailey Smith
How amazing would it feel to beat snobby St. Helena High School, with their mansion-like buildings and snazzy buses. This question would go on to be answered at CMC championships, with the Middletown cross country boys’ first place victory and girls’ second place win.
For Lake County cross country athletes, the Coastal Mountain Conference (CMC) championship is the meet that the entire season has been building up to. Held at Spring Lake park in Santa Rosa, this first round of championships determines which Mendocino, Lake, Napa, and Sonoma County teams will advance to sectionals and which will call this race their last.
The Middletown High School cross country team has had an exciting 2024 season, with every league meet showing the true potential of the dedicated athletes. The first few meets of the season brought definite victories for the boys and a number of second place wins for the girls, establishing their main enemy; St. Helena High School. However, the Middletown girls were just warming up and as the season progressed, they began to move up on the scoreboard, winning their last two league meets. It is exactly for this, that CMCs became an incredibly high-stakes race.
The big day brought storms, which threatened the safety of the course and worried the soon to be runners. MHS senior Caterina Barriga explains,
“I think we do really well on hot, hilly courses rather than cold, less hilly courses, so I think that also was a factor.”
This proved to especially affect the girl’s team’s performance, which finally began after a delayed start to the JV boys race.
Following Middletown’s JV win, varsity girls lined up on the start line, huddling together for what might be the last time. Barriga shares,
“I was still expecting to go on to NCS, but we did not unfortunately, which is really sad because all the other years we obviously did, so we lost our streak.”
For Caterina, this was the last chance to show the strength of the girl’s team.
The race kicked off with an optimistic start, but a little over halfway through, the girls began to lose sight of victory. Saint Helena’s third fastest girl runner, Loma Henry passed Middletown’s second and third fastest runners, Caterina Barriga and Nala Montgomery. Middletown’s Bailey Smith was able to keep a substantial lead in front of Henry, but still finished far behind Saint Helena’s top two runners. In the overall scoring, this resulted in Middletown taking 12th, 16th, 18th, 25th, and 28th, which put them 14 points behind Saint Helena.
This meant that Middletown still placed top two in the NCL ll division, but because of their coaches executive decision, they would not be moving on to NCS. Head coach Taylor Tiraterra tells, “We had talked about this a lot in definite detail. There were some girls that we really would have loved to take to NCS individually. We felt the team as a whole was far too erratic to justify taking the entire team.”
The varsity boys race followed shortly after, with Middletown proving their already established lead over the other teams early on in the race. Middletown senior Quinn Murray came in at 18.25, setting a seasonal PR (personal record). Not far behind him, freshman Landon Pisaro crossed the finish line, demonstrating exactly why he was moved up to varsity so early in his high school career. Ren Ueno, Israel Haro, and Logan Ramos finished minutes after, cementing their victory in the NCL l division.
Overall, Middletown’s battle against Saint Helena at the CMC championship race once again showed the extent of the team’s strength and resilience. The varsity boys’ extraordinary victory advanced them to NCS championships, where they will race against teams from out of their surrounding leagues. The girls’ second place win unfortunately resulted in this race being their last of the season, but their strong fight and determination will be passed down to next year’s cross country team and hopefully lead them to return to the title of CMC champions.
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