On a cloudy Saturday at Daly City’s Westmoor High School, the Aragon Dons track and field team competed at the Peninsula Athletic League (PAL) championships. Athletes across the bay area individually vied for a chance to participate at the Central Coastal Section (CCS) championships at the end of May.
The girls team captured fourth, behind Mills, Menlo-Atherton and Burlingame. Meanwhile, the boys team took sixth place, behind such teams as Mills, Carlmont, Woodside, and Burlingame. On the team’s performance at the event, coach Ronald Berggren said, “As a team, we didn’t do very [well], but there were some good individual performances. But it’s all about the PRs [personal records]. In the championships, of the 22 athletes, we had 16 PRs.”
In track, the Dons boys had a number of CCS qualifiers. Sophomore David Prager and junior Nigel Beckford placed third and fifth, respectively, in the 200-meter dash, junior Kevin Arevalo got second in the 110-meter hurdles, and junior Ryan McAuliffe took fourth in the 1600-meter run. Prager missed second place by 0.02 seconds, while Arevalo was 0.05 seconds behind the first place finisher.
Prager says, “Last year I beat a friend of mine by 0.08 on one occasion. I’ve had similar finishes to races where it’s super close and it’s strange because there have been times I thought I lost or won and it was the opposite.”
One of the stories of the day was the Dons boys 4×100-meter relay. Going into the finals, the Dons were seeded first, but numerous injuries meant that there weren’t enough athletes to fill out a team. Senior Tyee Stokman was unable to run after injuring himself in the preliminary rounds of the PAL Championship, “We had the best 4×100 time going into the PAL Championships and we couldn’t even field a team. Between [Stokman’s] injury, [junior Danny Halawi’s] injury, and [senior Antony Cabuslay’s] injury, all those guys kept getting injured. Basically, we had two of the four runners remaining healthy in the end,” stated Berggren.
The Lady Dons were competitive in track as well, winning medals and CCS bids in several events. Junior Magali de Sauvage placed second in the 300-meter hurdles, sophomore Margot Bellon took third in the 800-meter run, and junior Aileen Calter sprinted her way to fourth in the 100-meter dash. The girls 4×100 relay team also claimed third place, less than two seconds behind first-place finishers Burlingame.
In the field events, some Dons athletes placed in several events, making CCS. Juniors Kristan Hilby* and Anna Joshi took second and third place in the high jump, respectively. Additionally, senior Amy Yu placed fifth in the long jump, also qualifying for CCS. Berggren says, “[It was] a total surprise that she made it in the long jump. I think it’s great. I love [Yu], and she jumped like three times further than she is tall. She earned it.”
On the boys’ side, Stokman qualified for CCS by claiming second place in the long jump, but because of his injury, he will be unable to compete.
Overall, this has been a season of highs and lows for the Dons. The boys tied with Mills for first place in the league dual meet standings, while the girls took second place, behind only Westmoor in the PAL Bay league. Yet, this was a tough season for the Dons in terms of injuries. In addition to the loss of Stokman mentioned above, the boys team lost senior Antony Cabuslay as well as juniors Danny Halawi and Charles Cao. Prager says, “[Cabuslay] was our leader and [Halawi] and [Cao] were like the spirit of our team, so that was a heavy loss on us. I think one of the more painful parts about losing them was that we could have gone to state in our relays and the constant wave after wave of injuries just never gave us a break.”
The Dons who qualified for CCS will compete at San Jose City College on May 23 in the CCS Semifinals.
