NewsCROSS COUNTRY
Hughson High Cross Country Girls Finish 14th in State Meet
December 11, 2025
Hughson High School Cross Country closed the season competing at the State Championships. Competing in Division 4, which assigns schools based on size, Hughson High competed against teams that come from schools as large as 1,500 students. “We end up running against a lot of private school powers or public schools that might be close to twice our size,” Coach Joel Bernard said. That included Junipero Serra High School, fourth in the United States. “That would be like having our Football team play Mater Dei in the first round of the state playoffs.”
Knowing the State Championship is likely out of reach with these odds, “We try to focus on beating our own previous best team times and for athletes to beat their own personal records.”
Many of the athletes on the boys' team were sick or dealing with injuries from the two weeks between the section meet and the state meet. The state meet was a tough one for Boys Cross Country. After the Clovis Invitational, where Boys Cross Country ran their best-ever team time, placing them in a top ten placing prior to state, the team’s best runner, Alessandro Pimentel, pulled a hamstring during warm-ups. Without him, the team still won section championships, but to take a high placing at the state meet, Pimentel proved indispensable in that lineup.
At the section meeting, another runner re-injured an ankle that he had previously sprained, limiting his ability to get the quality training he needed leading up to the state meet. Illnesses followed with three more runners, leaving just one runner from the Clovis Invitation healthy and uninjured between the two meets.
“The one bright spot for the boys was the emergence of Manny Ruiz as a top runner in our program,” Bernard said. “Over the last half of the season, he's improved week after week and actually finished as our #1 runner at the state meet.”
Ruiz ran a 16:54 time for the 3.1-mile route, making him Hughson’s #11 runner of all-time at Woodward Park.
The boys finished 22nd out of 25 teams.
For the girls, it was a different story. The Girls Cross Country Team finished fourteenth in the toughest field ever assembled at the CIF State Meet. All of the girls ran their personal best times on the state meet course.
“Making it even more of an accomplishment is the fact that we lost two girls to freak injuries before the year even started,” Bernard said. “Both of them would have been likely scorers for us at the state meet.”
One runner rolled her ankle at camp, fracturing it and ending her whole season before it had even started. The other was diagnosed with a congenital heart condition that ended her season a month later. “I'm really proud of the girls who rallied and exhibited that ‘next runner up’ type of mindset.”
During the meet, Sophie Benham ran 18:31 for the 3.1-mile course, putting her second in Hughson High School’s records, behind Becky Hobby's time from 2010. Hobby later went on to run for UNLV on a full scholarship.
Maggie Becchetti and Noeli Gomez Orozco both ran 19:28 for the 5k distance, putting them at #7 and #8 all-time for Hughson High on the course.
Grace Benitez finished in 20:01, which put her #12 on Hughson’s all-time list.
All these combined, Hughson High Girls Cross Country ran their best team time ever, beating the previous best set by the 2016 team, led by Abigayle Mitchell, who later ran on scholarship at St. Mary's College.
CROSS COUNTRY
All Signs Point to Hughson High School Cross Country Qualifying for State Champs
November 12, 2025
Cross Country is still competing, preparing for sections and state playoffs. “This has been, by many measures, our best season ever,” Cross Country Coach Joel Bernard said.
JV boys and JV girls were both second, with two wins and two third-place finishes on the season. Cross Country went on to the section qualifying meet on November 8, needing only to make it to the top ten to make it to the section championship. “Our boys are the favorites to win the section title, and our girls are probably somewhere between #2 and #4 in the section,” Bernard said.
With an excellent shot to qualify for the state championship, Bernard sees Placer as one of the top teams in the state that will be tough to beat on the girls’ side. The state allocates championship berths based on how well each section has done at the State Championships. To qualify, the Boys need to place in the top 2 at the section meet, and the girls need to place in the top 3.
The season has been a great one, featuring highlights such as the preseason camp at Donner Summit. “Our teams are really able to come together as a unit to set common goals and standards,” Bernard said. “The bonding and friendships that we make up there will last a lifetime for some of these kids.”
Cross Country also traveled to the Clovis invitational, where the Girls placed second in what is usually considered the "state meet preview."
In a pre-season time trial, Sophie Benham broke a 15-year-old team record and has continued to run well all year, being named TVL’s Most Valuable for the second year in a row.
Alessandro Pimentel is now the second runner in the league, behind Sonora's Landon Wilson, turning around from, as Bernard puts it, “a chubby little freshman to the #4 runner out of over 500 in Division 4.”
“These kids deserve tons of credit. We have a few structural disadvantages when compared to some of the powerhouse teams in the area or around the state, but our kids rise to the challenge and excel,” Bernard said.
On November 8, Hughson High School Cross Country ran on the “Frogtown” cross-country course at the Calaveras County Fairgrounds. Freshman boys won. Junior Varsity boys won. Freshmen girls were fifth. Varsity Girls were second, behind last year's fourth-place state finisher, Placer. Varsity Boys were fourth. Alessandro Pimentel pulled a hamstring doing warm-up drills and could not compete. Despite Pimentel’s injury, the boys were able to easily qualify.
On November 15, the team will compete in sections at the Willow Hills Cross Country Course at Folsom High School, where Bernard predicts both varsity teams will qualify for the State Championships.
State Championships will be at Woodward Park in Fresno on November 29.
Hughson High School Cross Country Wins First TVL, Looks Ahead to a Strong Season
September 23, 2025
The season is already looking great for Hughson High School Cross Country. You may have seen these young people out running on the canals toward Ceres, even in 95+ degree weather. “Our kids are some of the hardest-working athletes on campus,” Bernard said. “I'm really proud of their effort.”
Both Boys and Girls Teams won their first TVL meet.
A week later, both teams competed in the Elite division at the Kim Duyst Invitational. The competition included two of the top fifteen teams in the nation. Hughson finished a ways down in the results, but ran a team time that put both the boys' team and girls' team into the top 6 of the Sac Joaquin Section for all divisions.
Sophie Benham and Noeli Gomez-Orozco power the Girls’ Team with the ability to place in the top five to ten runners in almost any race run. Benham broke a 15-year-old record for our preseason team time trial, previously held by Becky Hobby, earlier this year. Hobby went on to place fifth at the state meet that year.
“We have a little inexperience and youth further down the list, but those athletes are improving rapidly,” Coach Joel Bernard said.
That includes Maggie Becchetti, who has made enormous gains from last year. Now fast enough to be the top girl on most small school teams, Becchetti is currently the #3 girl on the team.
Looking ahead, Hilmar will be the team to beat. Hughson beat Hilmar at the TVL Opening, but according to Bernard, “They tend to peak well at the end of the season. We believe that the Section championship will come down to us and Placer. Placer was 4th at last year's state championship and returned most of their runners.”
The Boys Cross Country Team, as seen by the team’s JV results, is deep. “We are the deepest small school program in all of the Sac Joaquin Section,” Bernard said. The team can only place its top ten runners in a varsity race, meaning the next runners will fill the JV race. At the Kim Duyst meet, Hughson beat out all comers, large and small, with JV boys over 60 points ahead of the second-place team.
At the Sac Joaquin section, JV Boys looks poised to beat most small school varsity teams.
Alessandro Pimentel leads the team in speed with the best times on the track of 4:31 for the mile and 9:49 for 2 miles. Pimentel ran 16:15 for 5000m in the elite race at the Kim Duyst meet, placing him 29th in that race. In the two other varsity races that day, those times would have placed Pimentel in the top three.
Moving up on the Boys Team, Juan Palos and Mason Hoyle are both making big jumps from last year and running closer and closer to Alessandro now.
Not too much competition lies ahead for the Boys in the Sac Joaquin section. Bernard said, “We're better than we've ever been, and the section is a little down this year. At the Kim Duyst meet, we beat last year's section champions, West Campus of Sacramento, by about a minute and a half. The other team that could give us problems is Christian Brothers, but West Campus already beat them fairly handily this year.”
The coaches are aiming to keep their runners steady. “We just want to keep the season on a low simmer until it's time to pop big efforts for the championship meets,” he said.
Follow Cross Country’s season by checking results on athletic.net and on the team website, hughsoncc.blogspot.com.