Frias, Parsley, Chittenden lead Mira Costa Mustangs to first State Cross Country Title
Dalia Frias on her way to winning the Bay League Cross Country Championships race last month. Two weeks ago, she finished first in the CIF State Championships Cross Country race. Photo by Ray Vidal.
By Paul Teetor
By its very nature distance running is an individual sport. There have been stories written about the loneliness of the long-distance runner.
But it took a team of runners and close friends to win Mira Costa its first CIF cross country state championship.
A team led by Dalia Frias.
Of course Dalia Frias. Always Dalia Frias.
But also Ella Parsley.
And Anna Chittenden.
Those three are the terrific trio of Mira Costa runners who combined forces to pull off a stunning team win two Saturdays ago.
By now, every Beach Cities sports fan with a pulse has heard of Frias, the greatest runner, male or female, in the history of Mira Costa High School. And arguably the greatest runner ever to come out of the Beach Cities. Her ever-more-amazing exploits have filled the local newspaper sports pages for the last four years. She’s been named the Daily Breeze Girl’s athlete of the week so many times that she’s lost count.
“When people meet me, they say oh, you’re the runner, or oh, you’re the fast one,” Frias said. “I can’t get away from it no matter how hard I try. So I’ve stopped trying.”
And her legend keeps growing: Last month the senior star led the Mustang girls team to their first CIF-Southern Section title since 1982.
But November 26, the Costa girls did something totally unprecedented: they won the school’s first ever Division 2 State Cross Country title. And in the process Frias won the 3.1-mile race at Windward Park in Fresno in a time of 16 minutes and 52 seconds – the second-best time ever recorded on that course.
That was no surprise. Frias – a hard-core ice hockey player who never ran a competitive race before she wandered into the Mira Costa tryouts on a lark four falls ago – has dominated in both cross country and track since her freshman year.
“She just keeps getting better and better,” gushed the Mustangs coach, Renee Williams-Smith. “We still don’t know what her ceiling is. She could be one of the all-time greats before her college career is over.”
That would mean eclipsing Williams-Smith, who stitched her own uniform to join Mira Costa’s boys team when the school did not have a girls running team. Williams-Smith earned a full scholarship to run at Kansas State, then returned to found Mira Costa’s girls cross country team.
No matter how great Frias turns out to be once she starts her college career at Duke next fall, cross country is still scored as a team sport. The Mustangs could not have won their first state championship title without Ella Parsley, a senior who finished fourth with a time of 17 minutes and 45.5 seconds, and Anna Chittenden, a junior who finished sixth with a time of 17 minutes and 57.1 seconds.
“Anna’s finish was incredible,” Williams-Smith said. “She was in 21st place after the first mile and 14th place after the second mile. She made a huge jump and really picked it up in the second half of the race. She passed eight people with her finishing kick. ”
Frias said that sensing that Parsley and Chittenden were moving up as the race neared its end inspired her to push even harder to the point. She finished 11 seconds ahead of the second-place finisher.
“Ella’s drive and her passion for running and competing really came out in that race,” Frias said. “When she transferred in from Chadwick her sophomore year, we had no idea how good she would become. She’s quiet and keeps her emotions to herself, but Saturday she showed what a great heart she has. I couldn’t be prouder of what she’s become: a great competitor and a true champion.”
As for Chittenden, who projects to be the leader of the Costa cross-country team next fall, Frias said her sixth-place finish in the state championship presaged what is sure to be a super senior season.
Mira Costa High School girls cross country coaches Lisa Herman, Renee Williams-Smith, Annie Seawright, and Kiley Atwood with the 2021 CIF State Championships Cross Country Trophy. Photo courtesy of Mira Costa Cross Country
“Anna came from a family of runners who were all on the Costa team,” Frias said. “She has three siblings who all ran fast, but I think she’s going to turn out to be the fastest of them all. She’s such a wonderful athlete and so dedicated to getting better all the time. She had a hip problem, but she stayed on top of it so she was still able to race. She will definitely be a great leader next season.”
And when you drill down into the final results, since a team’s top five finishers out of its seven starters are counted towards the team score, you have to give a big slice of the credit for the Costa state championship to Heather Jensen, who finished 32nd, with a time of 18 minutes, and 56.4 seconds, and Lucca Franz, who finished 65th, with a time of 19 minutes and 21.5 seconds.
What sounds like really late finishes for those two girls have to be considered in context: there were 190 runners in the race, placing them in the top third of the pack.
“I’m so proud of how well they all ran, one through seven,” Williams-Smith said. “But to get three in the top 10 and five in the top 65 is unbelievable.”
As Williams-Smith celebrated her team’s long-sought state championship – she has been coaching Costa runners for 20 years, the first 3 years as an assistant – she remembered the first day she saw Frias in the summer of 2018 during the training program before the team tryouts.
“I had never heard of her,” Williams-Smith said. “All I knew was that she came out of Hermosa Valley School and was supposed to be a pretty good hockey player. I wasn’t sure what she was doing there, since we don’t run on ice.”
For her part, Frias admitted she was burned out on ice hockey. Two hours driving to practice every day was too much, and the constant physical grind on the ice was not something the reed-thin girl enjoyed. So she was casting about for a new sport when friends going to cross country tryouts suggested she come along.
“I had gone through every sport in the book — hockey, soccer, volleyball. I tried everything,” she said. “But I was done with all of them. When my friends invited me along, I figured why not give it a try?”
Her first impression of Williams-Smith? “She scared me,” Frias said. “I could tell right away she was tough, but fair. She gave everybody a chance.”
Frias’ goal was simple: “I just wanted to make the team,” she said. “I heard that the top 10 girls were going to a meet in Hawaii, which sounded really exciting. But I didn’t think I had a chance to join them.”
That all changed once Williams-Smith got her first close look at Frias running with the experienced upper-classmen.
“At the end of the summer training I noticed her running with the varsity girls,” Williams-Smith said. “Then I noticed she was keeping up with them with ease. It all happened so quickly. She started out as an unknown student just trying out, then became our number three runner and finally moved up to number one by the middle of her freshman year.”
Frias remembered that late summer and fall as a magical time of self-discovery in her short life.
“I knew if I made the top 10 I would get to go to Hawaii,” she said. “But I didn’t think I was close to that level yet. I was still just hoping to make the varsity so I figured there was no way.”
But she was chosen for the Hawaii trip, and it was on that island paradise that she realized she had found her new sport. And maybe even her new life’s passion.
“After the race in Hawaii I remember thinking all right I’m pretty good at this,” she said. “I kind of let myself break through, and realize I had discovered a new passion. Up until then I had been stuck behind the older girls and was kind of timid about thinking I was good enough to compete with them.”
For her part, Williams-Smith had one main thought as she watched Frias’ rapid development from a raw rookie to an emerging champion in the space of a few weeks: “I just got lucky,” she said. “I realized I was really, really lucky that this amazing girl, this incredible talent, showed up out of nowhere.”
And that was that, as far as Frias’ athletic career was concerned: “I used to play or practice hockey almost every day,” she said. “Now I don’t play at all.”
As she thought back to her freshman year, Frias admitted she didn’t dream big enough.
“Back then, I couldn’t imagine leading this team to a state championship,” said. “But now that it has finally happened it feels like all the hard work over the last four years paid off for the team, for all of us. The whole thing feels surreal. Like a dream.”
The dream isn’t quite over just yet. Soon it will be time for track season, where she competes in the 800 meters, the mile and the two mile events.
“Last season she set new school records in all three events,” Williams Smith said. “I can’t wait to see what she does this year.”
Contact: teetor.paul@gmail.com. Follow: @paulteetor