11.12.22 – For the third season in as many CCS Championships, the Menlo Knights will send both boys and girls teams to the state meet in the wake of their top finishes at CCS Championships at Crystal Springs in Belmont on Saturday.
The boys team took second in Div. V with 37, just five points behind leader Crystal, and 57 points ahead of third-place finisher Nueva. All three teams advance to state. The girls team finished third with 76 points. Crystal won and Castilleja was 6 points back, and edged Nueva by two points. The four qualified for state.
The teams will race on Saturday, Nov. 26 at Woodward Park in Fresno with the Div. V girls starting at 9 am and the boys at 10 am.
Knights senior Justin Pretre cruised to victory in 14:58.1 on the 2.95-mile course. His closest competitor was Benjamin Bouie of Crystal in 15:23.7.Sophomore Landon Pretre was third in 15:31.0 and senior Aiden Deffner eighth in 16:15.7. Sophomores Will Hauser (16:50.6) and Jared Saal (16:54.2) closed in on 13th and 14th while freshman James Yuen was 18th (17:05.7) and junior Alex Boesch 20th in 17:16.7
On the girls’ side, a Knights team made up of all underclassmen took the stage: freshman Ariya Kaushek was Menlo’s top finisher in 19:51.1 for seventh. Devon Tussing-Adkinson, also a freshman, was ninth in 20:06.6 and sophomore Eden Chuang was 11th in 20:11.0. Sophomore Audrey Tsao was 16th in 21:02.8 while freshman Anya Kothari had a time of 23L:22.5 and Lavanya Badjate in 24:47.1