In November 2025, the cross-country girls’ team went to the California CIF Division 5 State Championships in Clovis, CA and placed 5th. I don’t think we talked about it enough. And I think it’s because they are girls.
The team’s performance at State Championships wasn’t the beginning of the girls’ competitive success. The girls on the team have pulled off an amazing comeback in the last couple of years with Chris Puppione, a former Olympic coach, as their head coach. They’ve won league titles in 2018, 2024 and 2025, in addition to many other successes at the CMC championships, and are expected to continue winning more titles.
In November 2025, the cross-country girls’ team went to the California CIF Division 5 State Championships in Clovis, CA and placed 5th for Division 5. Their overall performance, with a total time of 97:20, with a distance of 3.1 miles, was the best in school history, beating the previous record from 2014 by three minutes.
No one seems to know about these accomplishments. They are barely mentioned at school or in the athletic department.
After this most recent performance at States, the team returned to campus to find that no one was congratulating them, and no one knew what they had just achieved. As one of these athletes, I felt very upset and underappreciated after accomplishing something as great as we had done. It felt like people had known how much work we had done and yet decided not to recognize us at all.
Cross country is one of the very underrated sports in general here at Sonoma Academy, as people don’t generally see the fun or the reason why people do the sport. Cross country runner Connor Kempiak (‘26) wrote about this for the Paw Print.
However, I don’t think this recent success was ignored just because of the sport. I think that it showed a pattern of female athletes not getting enough recognition at SA.
This is not just a problem at SA. For instance, around 45% of adults watch men’s sports and only around 23% of adults watch women’s sports. The most recent men’s World Cup (2022) had 5 billion total viewers, and the women’s in 2023 had only 2 billion viewers. All over the world, women’s sports are not viewed as much as men’s.
This is because of the belief that male athletes’ biological advantages make their games inherently more exciting and more competitive, and because men’s sports have a much larger history in mainstream media that is hard for women’s sports to overcome.
At SA, however, this discrepancy between girls’ and boys’ sports is more subtle. It appears in how much we post about them (just look at the SA Athletics Instagram!), how many people show up to games and how we talk about and treat female athletes.
As a female athlete, I’ve felt like I’m not taken seriously. I’ve noticed people are intimidated by female athletes, being upset at things such as when girls are considered faster or stronger than a guy at a physical activity, like beating them in the mile, or lifting heavier weights, which makes boys insecure. I’ve noticed coaches who treat us differently, just because we’re girls. I’ve heard stories of coaches who bring up girls’ periods, or assume they’re vulnerable and overemotional. I’ve also noticed that female athletes’ bodies, both in high school and professional sports, are scrutinized in a way that I haven’t noticed about men. Overall, I think we simply treat female athletes differently, and we need to stop.
I’m not the only one to notice this pattern; it was a focus of the Student Leadership Council’s Athletic Coordinators this year. As Alexa Torres (‘27), one coordinator, said, “I feel like female sports at this school can definitely be highlighted and celebrated, and should be taken just as seriously as male sports. I want us to show up for all our student bodies and athletics equally.”
As she noted, Back the Pack, the most well-attended and advertised athletic event all year, has been for boys’ soccer for the past two years. So, the athletic coordinators fought to make it a girls’ volleyball game. This is crucial because the girls’ team deserves to be highlighted at a big event just as much as the boys’ team, and inconvenient scheduling difficulties should not be the thing that stands in the way of that.
While girls’ sports should be promoted everywhere, it is especially important at SA, where our female athletes are exceptional, like those on the cross country team.
For example, Josie Hill (‘27), who transferred here from Technology High School in 2025, placed 9th out of 200 runners in the CIF Division V. In addition, Hill set a new school record of 18:03 for the 5k at the State meet. More recently, she broke the record for the 800m, running a time of 2:06.38, 2nd fastest in the nation. She is one of many athletes that Torres highlighted through the new Athlete of the Week program. To read more about Hill, check out our recent piece.
Hill loved competing with six other girls by her side instead of individually. She said, “I feel like our girls’ team got along really well, and when you’re doing it for a team, it’s a lot more motivation than just doing it for yourself.”
Furthermore, Annie Leyba (‘29) and Elaina Bruntlett (‘27) placed in the top 50 out of the 200 runners in the Division 5 race overall, finishing 22nd and 48th respectively. Claire Hirsch (‘26), Mia Carpenter (‘27), Amelia Butkus (‘27) and Kiara Alverez Ceja (‘28) placed highly as well, and the Coyotes’ successful performance all around edged out Branson High School to take the 5th place spot at CIF State in our division.
The boys’ team did not attend States this year. Even though the boys did not advance onto the CIF meet, Leyba was very proud of the boys’ success. She said, “I felt very happy and proud. I was kind of sad actually that the guys didn’t come too, because I think they had a good season and they came last year. But it was nice that we got our own turn too.”
Despite all these successes, when I mentioned our achievements, no one knew or understood that this was a big deal for the sports success at the school.
And we aren’t the only girls in SA sports not getting recognized. The girls’ teams have amazing accomplishments that have contributed well to the sports program at our school through title wins, athletes committed to college sports and local news coverage. Just recently, on May 7th, Elaina Bruntlett (‘26) and Kate Bilal (‘26) were honored with Press Democrat awards for Female Athlete of the Year and Female Scholar Athlete of the Year, respectively. Still, we don’t give these girls enough credit.
Take our girls’ soccer team. This year, they won the NCS Division II Championship for the first time ever in the school’s history. This was a huge accomplishment, and I noticed a lack of understanding from the community about the extent of this accomplishment. To be clear: our team competed successfully against schools triple our size. The boys’ soccer team has competed in Division I, but they play in the fall, in a much less competitive pool compared to the girls.
As someone who goes to the girls’ soccer games during their season, I don’t see a lot of support from our student body or staffulty at the games. The games mostly are right on our own campus as well. While the time of the day, distance from home or other commitments could keep spectators away, I really think these girls deserve more support, and that none of these common excuses are sufficient.
That support means a lot to athletes, and they wish it could be seen throughout the season. As girls’ soccer goalie Dahlia Scanlon (‘27) said, “I feel like people show up when the games start getting big. Even when we compete against the top team. I would appreciate consistent support throughout all of them, but we really do appreciate all of the people coming out for the big championship and semifinals games.”
As a school, we need to change how we treat female athletes.
We need to support all sports equally, and that means attending both girls’ and boys’ games as much as we can, talking about their success and congratulating them up at P.S.
We also need better representation of women in sports. We have very few female coaches, and almost our entire administrative athletic staff is men. This means that girls, who are already pressured by society’s standards (that tell us that we can’t be too tough, or gross, or even sweaty) to avoid sports, don’t have the support to join. Summer Weiner (‘26), an SA basketball player, noticed this absence, saying, “I wish girls were more interested in sports or maybe more confident about joining them.”
We need to stop ignoring female athletes. Stop dismissing them, their injuries, their stories and their successes.
More than anything, don’t let your misconceptions about these athletes keep you from supporting them. Cross country isn’t just “running,” and you’d see that if you went to a meet. Brave the cold and maybe you’ll catch the next time the girls’ soccer team breaks a school record.
Whether it’s runners on the Spring Lake course, or players on the court, we should all show up and show our support for our talented Sonoma Academy athletes. Our female athletes in basketball, cross country, track and field, tennis, soccer, volleyball, fencing, rowing and horseback riding should be supported and their success and triumphs should be recognized throughout the school community. This doesn’t mean you have to show up for every game, meet or tournament, but it does mean wishing them good luck, letting them know you support them and being there when you can. All student athletes deserve the same amount of support.
