Piedmont High School’s girls cross country team finished third at the North Coast Section Division 4 championships on November 22, qualifying for the California Interscholastic Federation championships. The boys team took ninth place.
“Pack running,” Highlanders coach Steve Zirkelbach said of the reason the girls team advanced. “They ran together, they helped and pushed each other. It was the strength of the team – every runner – that made the difference.”
Piedmont finished with 116 points, well in front of fourth place Bishop O’Dowd (131). Archie Williams-San Anselmo won the team title with 21 points. Miramonte was second with 84.
Leighton Mand led the Highlanders in 17th place. She finished the three-mile course at Hayward High in 19 minutes, 52.5 seconds. Skylar Best and Viviane Oesterer were 24th and 25th, respectively, in 20:23.1 and 20:23.4. Cora Chun was 30th in 20:46.9. Nikita Gorelik was 33rd in 20:49.2.
Cora Brozowski Schrader was a non-scoring 35th (20:51.4) with Amalia Gray 38th (21:08.0).
Zirkelbach noted that Chun and Gorelik made major moves after the first mile. “They shaved off 26 points alone over those 2 miles,” he said. Zirkelbach said nobody had a personal-best. “We often think that every runner has to have their best day in order for the team to do well, but as it turns out, it is more important for everyone to have a ‘good’ day, not a great one in order to see success,” he said.
Archie Williams swept the top three individual spots with Brooke Lee (17:51.4), Anali Stieg (18:21.0) and Claire Palmer (18:27.5) running away from the competition.
It’s the first time the Piedmont girls team has made the state meet since 2019.
The boys didn’t qualify for the CIF championships, but they ran well enough to finish ninth with 204 points. That despite top running Sebastien Swain missing the season while recovering from surgery.
Dresden Schulte-Sasse was the top Highlander, finishing 30th in 17:09.6. Alex Schleuning was 34th in 17:14.5. Aaron Bennett (17:28.7) and Dylan Wallway (17:30.3) were 38th and 39th . Ian Chung came across 70th in 18:08.6 to complete the scorers.
Devon Thai was 78th in 18:20.3 while Noah Sohn was 88 th in 18:47.7.
The CIF championships are scheduled for Nov. 29 at Woodward Park in Fresno. Piedmont will run the Division 4 girls race at 12 noon.