The Servite boys track team, led by its fleet of freshmen sprinters, culminated its remarkable season by capturing the ultimate prize – a state team championship — on Saturday night in Clovis.
The Friars finished the CIF State Track and Field Championships at Buchanan High with 33 points to take the top spot on the medals podium. Runner-up Clovis North had 30 points.
Servite kicked off the finals Saturday evening by winning the 4×100-meter relay and they closed it with a third-place finish in the 4×400 relay. In between the relays, they picked up crucial points in individual events.
The four freshmen who made up the Friars’ 4×100 relay – Jace Wells, Jaelen Hunter, Kamil Pelovello and Jorden Wells — couldn’t quite match their state-leading time of 40.00 seconds but the foursome of was fast enough to win in 40.27 seconds.
Mission accomplished ✔️
2025 CIF STATE TRACK & FIELD CHAMPIONS‼️🏆 #credo #gofriars #weareservite pic.twitter.com/YyKwY82AoU
— Servite Athletics (@ServiteSports) June 1, 2025
The same group finished third in the 4×400 in 3 minutes, 9.46 seconds, behind Long Beach Poly and Central East of Fresno.
Hunter also finished second in the 400 in 46.65, falling short of his county-leading time of 46.32.
Servite’s Benjamin Harris took second in the 100 in a personal-best time of 10.3.
“They’ve been accustomed to winning in their youth track careers and so when you put winners together with other winners this is what it comes to,” Servite coach Brandon Thomas said. “They really train hard, they really come together for one another.”
Santa Margarita, led by Leo Francis and Brady Fur, finished third with 24 points.
JSerra tied for 11th with 16 points and Mater Dei was 35th with six points.
The Lions’ boys 4×800 relay team won the event in 7:33.43.
Francis capped his stellar season for the Eagles with an excellent performance in two events.
Francis, who came in as the county leader in the long jump, won the event, with a jump season-best of 25 feet, 3/4 inch.
Later in the night, he finished third in the 200 in 20.84.
The Eagles’ Brady Fur finished second in the pole vault, clearing 16 feet, 4 inches.
Evan Noonan of Dana Hills was expected to contend for first place in the 3,200, but the senior didn’t run in the race.
Rich Gonzalez, who runs PrepCalTrack.com, reported that Noonan, the defending state champion in the event, was “suffering from a severe stomach flu throughout the day.”
Noonan came into the weekend as county leader in the 1,600 and 3,200 and won the 3,200 (8:55.76) in the CIF SS Masters on May 24.
In the girls competition:
Aliso Niguel, led by Jaslene Massey, was the highest-placing Orange County team with 18 points (tied for 8th).
Massey, who leads the county in the discus and shot put, won the discus with a throw of 163 feet, 9 inches, more than 9 feet better than the second-place finisher.
Massey finished second in the shot with a throw of 45-5 1/4, just a half inch behind the winner Aja Johnson of Notre Dame of Sherman Oaks.
‘I feel very proud of what I’ve done in the disc and how far I’ve come this season,” Massey said. “Shot didn’t go as well as I had hoped, but it turned into a valuable lesson. Sky’s the limit from here and I can’t wait to compete again in Nike Outdoor Nationals and looking forward to my senior season.”
“I do believe track is about getting better,” she added. “In terms of disc, I think that’s what happened, but in shot I didn’t feel my best. I wanted to hit 50 feet-plus again and I hope to do that in a couple weeks. For now, back to the drawing board to figure out how my coach and I can achieve that.”
Rosary’s Justine Wilson made it to the medal platform with a fifth-place finish in the 200.
The junior’s time of 23.80 is off her county-leading time by about four-tenths of a second.
The JSerra girls were 16th in the team standings with 14.5 points.
JSerra’s Anne Elise Packard finished fourth in the 800 and came back to run the anchor leg of the team’s 4×800 relay. The Lions finished second in the race to Santiago of Corona, which set a state record of 8:49.01. JSerra finished in a county-leading time of 8:52.68,
In the girls 3,200, Holy Barker of Trabuco Hills, the county leader in the event, finished third in 10:10.39.
The top two finishers in the race – Hanne Thomsen of Montgomery of Santa Rosa and Rylee Blade of Santiago of Corona – ran 9:48.98 and 9:50.51, respectively.
Dana Hills’ Sydni Harden finished second in the pole vault, clearing 12-6.
