Benefield: Santa Rosa High’s Luca Mazzanti has finest race at state meet

While most of us were lolling about, deep in the (dis)comfort of being over-served at Thanksgiving this weekend, a slew of area athletes were toeing the line in the biggest of the big cross country meets in California.

It all went down at the CIF state cross country championship on the hilly 5k cross country course in Fresno on Saturday. And Santa Rosa senior Luca Mazzanti had, perhaps, the race of the day.

Mazzanti went into the race wanting to avenge what he called a subpar performance at the North Coast Section meet in Hayward on Nov. 19 where he finished fifth.

So on Saturday he lined up against all of those guys again, plus the best of the best from the Division 2 schools from across California. He beat all of them but four.

Mazzanti’s name did not appear in the pre-race favorites list. No matter. It appears on the results list now.

“I felt I was more competitive than I showed at sectionals,” he said. “I went in with a place in mind, that top 20 would be great and top 10 would be awesome.”

Mazzanti settled for double-awesome.

“I was super happy with it,” he said. “I was crossing the line thinking ‘That went really well.’?”

If by really well he meant fourth fastest time in the history of the Redwood Empire, then yeah, a passable performance it was. His coach, Carrie Joseph, called it “a perfectly executed race. An amazing performance.”

“To say he rose to the occasion is an understatement,” she said.

A number of other runners and teams had solid showings Saturday.

So close was the Division 5 boys race that El Molino senior Brian Schulz had the exact - as in down to the hundredth of a second - same time as a competitor: 15:39.3. In official race results, Schulz was listed as the third-place finisher. His competitor took second.

“I was thinking about diving actually, but when I got there, when I was at the line, it felt like diving would have made me fall back more than pushing forward,” he said.

Schulz had the lead with about 50 yards to go, he said, but the other guy made his move. That launched Schulz’s counter that came up just shy, but it was a finish that drew attention.

“It was a fight all the way down that last grass,” said Danny Aldridge, the coach of the Sonoma Academy squad.

Still, even third place gave the heralded Lion the best placing among all Redwood Empire runners Saturday.

Last year, too, Schulz posted the best place among area runners when he finished seventh with a time of 15:38.7. How’s that for consistency?

While a long list of individual athletes ran qualifying times at the NCS meet, just four teams earned the right to run en masse in Fresno: the boys and girls squads from Sonoma Academy and Maria Carrillo.

“It was the first time I’ve been able to get both boys and girls there,” Aldridge said. “That brought a little bit of excitement for us.”

The Coyotes defied expectations on both sides of the ledger by besting pre-meet rankings. Both teams were ranked 10th but the boys finished ninth and the girls grabbed seventh place, which means that a pre-meet bet will be paid up in the coming weeks: the teams agreed that whichever squad finished better in the scoring would be treated to a meal served by the losing team.

“The boys have to make dinner,” Aldridge said. “The girls have to make the menu but it has to be approved by the coaches. It’ll be good, I’ll get a free meal out of it.”

Maria Carrillo, too, earned tickets for both the boys and girls squads to compete in Fresno.

The girls squad, led by sophomore Aimee Armstrong, who came in 44th, finished 14th out of 24 Division 3 teams, and the boys finished 15th.

Armstrong’s 18:55 was fifth best among Empire runners, but she wasn’t alone. Fellow Puma Sydnie Rivas finished 50th in 19:04 and Talia Leano crossed the line in 80th in 19:35.

Carrillo junior Ben Lawson led the Pumas with a race that nipped fellow North Bay League standout Robert Swoboda of Ukiah at the tape. Lawson finished in 16:17 and Swoboda, a senior, finished all of .1 seconds later.

Other boys who put in top performances were Rincon Valley Christian senior Wes Methum (16:09), Piner junior Jonny Vargas (16:12) and Kelseyville sophomore Andre Williams (16:16).

On the girls’ side, two-time defending Division 5 state champ and Sonoma Academy junior Rylee Bowen was picked to finish second to long-time competitor Keira Marshall of St. Joseph Notre Dame in Alameda after Marshall, a senior, bested Bowen by 30 seconds at the NCS meet in Hayward.

Marshall took the race in 17:40 and Bowen finished sixth with a time of 18:34. Bowen’s first-place time last year on the same course was 18:12.

“When you are a two-time champion, do you want to defend? Absolutely,” Aldridge said, adding that Marshall had a spectacular race.

“(Marshall) ended up running 45 seconds faster than Rylee has ever run on that course,” he said.

The blistering early pace took its toll, he said.

Bowen’s sister, Kate, a freshman at Sonoma Academy, finished in eighth place in 18:38 - the ninth best time for a freshman in Division 5, Aldridge said.

The Bowen sisters put in the fastest times among Empire girls on the day. They were followed by Healdsburg sophomore Gabrielle Peterson (18:52), Carrillo’s Armstrong (18:55), Piner sophomore Cynthia Rosales (19:01), Carrillo junior Sydnie Rivas (19:04) and Technology junior Iris Berto (19:20), who finished 20th in the Division 5 race.

For all runners, there has to be a certain amount of magic to making mind and body answer the call on the same day in the pressure cooker of elite competition.

For Mazzanti, the race went about as well as it possibly could, even after he lost a late lead that was promptly reeled back in.

“I was just right there, so I figured, ‘Why not?’?” he said. “There was a long straightaway and they kicked me back down.”

But not too far down.

“It only happens like once or twice a season where (a race plan) works perfectly,” he said.

He picked a good day for it.

You can reach staff columnist Kerry Benefield at 526-8671 or kerry.benefield@pressdemocrat.com, on Twitter @benefield and on Instagram at kerry.benefield. Podcasting on iTunes “Overtime with Kerry Benefield.”