At Saturday’s cross country meet at Crystal Springs, the Carlmont Mens Varsity Cross Country team secured the Pacific Athletic League (PAL) championship.

The runners were confident in the race and took another PAL championship, placing first out of 16 other schools.

“We destroyed the race,” Johain Ounadjela said. “We knew that we were going to win PAL from the beginning of the season.”

Michael Bereket came in second place at 15:59.0, followed by Mark Vingralek in third at 16:00.2, and Owen Lee in fourth place at 16:00.9. Ryan Dimick finished in fifth place, with James Schulte in eighth place, Ounadjela in 13th place, and Brandon Whiteley in 19th place.

“We ran really well, and we were able to do what we were hoping for, ” Bereket said, “The toughest part was after the first mile coming up the hill, but after that we were running smoothly.”

The three-mile course consists of a dirt track and several hills, which brought a challenge to the runners.

“Crystal is a hard course,” Schulte said, “I’m glad we trained as much as we did, or else we might not have done so well.”

After winning the PAL championship, the team’s next challenges will be running in the Central Coast Section (CCS) championship and the State championship in late November. The team will continue to train regularly for the races.

“They ran well,” Head Coach Al Schmidt said, “The new members got in shape for the season. We’ll do more of the same training that we’ve always done and hopefully they’ll [mens varsity cross country] run faster for the upcoming meets.”