Steele Canyon High School’s boys and girls cross country teams enter the 2024 season as Grossmont Hills League champions. Moreover, the Cougars are coming off a highly successful 2023 season that saw the girls team edge Vista in a tiebreaker for second place among Division II San Diego Section teams and the boys squad place third.
Both teams qualified for the state championship meet in Fresno.
It’s a new season and both Steele Canyon teams are looking for renewed success in 2024.
Steele Canyon stepped off the Grossmont Hills League season with a sweep of all four levels (boys varsity, girls varsity, boys junior varsity and girls JV) Sept. 26 against visiting El Capitan High School.
The Cougars defeated the Vaqueros by scores of 23-36 (boys varsity), 20-35 (girls varsity), 25-32 (boys JV) and a perfect 15 score in girls JV.
Both Steele Canyon head girls coach Madison Nocon and boys head coach Aaron Weston believe their teams started the season on a positive note.
“It’s very optimistic as El Capitan was a very competitive dual meet for us,” Nocon said. “Grossmont is also a strong team. I’m optimistic we can repeat as league champions.”
“We return all runners,” Weston said. “We have a very seasoned team. We have one sophomore and two juniors and all the rest seniors. We’ll be graduating a pretty big group.”
Heading that large group are seniors Micah Senn, Miguel Casillas and Also Covarrubias. Senn returns as the defending Grossmont Hills League individual champion.
Senn was the standout runner in the dual encounter against the Vaqueros with a 34-second victory in the field of 19 varsity boys runners. He timed 16:27 on the 5K on-campus course, finishing well ahead of El Capitan senior Jonathan Webb (17:01). Casillas was third in 17:08, followed by Covarrubias in 17:36.
The Vaqueros placed the next two runners — junior Noah Redman (fifth, 17:52) and senior Agostino Soto-Wang (sixth, 17:55). However, the hosts countered with the next five runners to place their five scorers among the top eight finishers and six runners among the top 10 finishers overall.
Steele’s group of five included sophomore Matthew Stevens (eighth, 17:59), senior Matthew Binsfield (ninth, 18:22), senior Dashiell Griffiths (11th, 18:27), senior Zachary Baker (10th, 18:34), junior Diego Moreno (11th, 18:38) and junior Jacob Hart (12th, 18:45).
Senn has excelled to start this season. He won the Junior/Senior Division 1 race at the season opening Vaquero Stampede Aug. 24 and recorded a runner-up finish in the 124-deep Mustangs Division boys varsity division at the Ian Cumming/Tim Latham Invitational Sept. 6 at Rohr Park, an event that featured 10 races and 52 teams.
Weston called Senn “one of the best runners in the county.”
Senn placed seventh at last year’s Division II finals and was 100th among the 201 runners in the division at the state meet.
His goal is to move up this season.
“It’s motivates me,” Senn said of being a returning league individual champion. “Coming back, it’s always good to know who I’m racing against. It’s always good to have this competition in the Grossmont Hills League. I’m just going to try to regain my title again.
“In CIF I’m going to really take it out. I know there is strong competition. I’m going to try hard to see if I can win CIF.”
His teammates are equally motivated.
“I hope to push myself to be the best I can be,” Casillas said.
Senior Dania Lopez (16:06), senior Shelby Coleman (16:32) and junior Danica Ferrez finished 1-2-3 in the dual against El Capitan as the Lady Cougars scored five of the top eight finishers. All three runners recorded personal bests on the 2.56-mile course.
El Capitan’s top finishers included sophomore Cora Lottermoser (fourth, 16:38) and junior Aubree Boinus (fifth, 16:42). Steele junior Kaitlyn Baldwin (sixth, 17:12), El Cap junior Ashlynn Montes (seventh, 17:25), Steele junior Abbey Patstone (eighth, 18:01), El Cap junior Maddox Macias (ninth, 18:26) and Lady Vaq sophomore Natalie Schneider (10th, 18:36) rounded out the top 10 finishers in the 14-deep race.
Lopez was fourth in the division at last year’s section finals, 87th among the 197 entrants at the state meet. She is returning to defend league title … and maybe more.
“It felt pretty good to win our opening league dual, we definitely want to keep it going,” Lopez said. “My confidence is strong.”
“We all PR’d by 15 to 30 seconds each,” Coleman added. “Going 1-2- 3 gives us a lot of confidence that we can be a strong team.”
Lopez and Ferrez were third and fourth, respectively among Division 1 runners at the Vaquero Stampede.
Grossmont finished fourth as a team in the Mustangs boys varsity division at the Ian Cumming/ Tim Latham Invitational while Granite Hills senior Orlando Carrillo was the top East County individual (11th, 10:27.6) among the 124 runners.
Grossmont sophomore Myles Cata (15th, 10:34.7) and junior teammate Paul Benrud (17th, 10:35.5), along with Steele’s Covarrubias (20th, 10:37.7), all cracked the top 20 individual list (top 16 percent of the runners in the race).