Sadie Hersh co-editor-in-chief
In their second league meet, Beverly’s cross country team went up against Hawthorne High School, Lawndale High School, Culver City High School, El Segundo High School and Santa Monica High School to qualify CIF. While they will not find out if they made it to CIF until next week, the team performed well, with the boys varsity winning first place overall.
The meet took place on Oct. 15 at Rancho Park, where many student athletes stood out and placed within the top runners competing amongst all six schools racing.
Among the boys varsity team, junior Jonathan Cohen placed first for the Beverly boys squad and came in third place overall. In second amongst boys varsity runners and fifth overall came junior Jason Cohen. The team’s third place runner was junior Shimon Dubner, who placed seventh.
“The team felt confident overall coming into the meet. We knew the other teams were looking to knock us out of our first place spot, so we ran hard (it was a very close race) and were just able to win first place again as a team,” Jonathan Cohen said.
The girls varsity also dominated the meet coming in fourth place with junior Jillian Dveirin coming in first place among Beverly runners and 12th place out of all six competing schools. Senior Sydney Hanover ranked second within the girls varsity team and 15th overall. In third place for Beverly girls and 21st amongst the six total schools, sophomore Zoe Hinton rounded out Beverly’s top three girl runners.
“I felt really pressured going into the meet because I wanted us to place third as a team,” Dveirin said.
While they are still waiting for the final results of whether they will be advancing to CIF, the team will continue to practice daily.
“We have been qualifying for CIF for a long time. We are looking very strong right now and we think if we start to pick up the training, we can hopefully make it to CIF Finals this year. Next year, we will be aiming bigger and hopefully shooting for the state meet,” Jonathan Cohen said.