Photos by Craig Weston
46th Annual Will Rogers 5/10K Gets Independence Day Festivities off to Healthy Start in Pacific Palisades
By STEVE GALLUZZO | Sports Editor
On what race co-announcer Sam Lagana described as a ‘perfect’ Fourth of July morning, a crowd of patriotic Palisadians packed the entrance to the Palisades Recreation Center shortly before 8:15 to hear Lagana’s colleague Jimmy Dunne recite an independence day poem. Then Ross Chitwood, a Juilliard School graduate and Director of Worship and Community at Palisades United Methodist Church, stepped to the microphone to sing the national anthem, after which race starter Michael Ricks, CEO of event sponsor Saint John’s Health Center, sounded the horn to set the field of nearly 2,250 runners on its way in the Palisades Will Rogers 5 & 10K Run.
Exactly 16 minutes later, University of Michigan club runner Noah Wexler broke the tape to win the men’s 5K for the first time after taking second in the Palisades Turkey Trot last Thanksgiving.
“I was running 60-70 miles a week and had a really good run at the end of club season in the middle of April when I ran 15:55 in the 5K,” said Wexler, a former Palisades High cross country and track runner who just completed his freshman year in Ann Arbor, where he is majoring in Sports Management. “I took it easy two or three days before this and that helped. I was fourth last year so I’m really happy with the result.”
Running side by side with Wexler for most of the 3.1-mile course through the Huntington was Pali High senior-to-be Max Fields, who settled for second place for the second year in a row. Last year he was 18 seconds behind Loyola High’s Jake Ratkovich. This time he was only six seconds off the pace of his former Dolphins teammate.
“It helped running with Max,” said Wexler, who an hour later ran the Kids’ Fun Run with his 6-year-old brother Weston as he had in 2022. “I passed Max at the very end. We trained together at Pali so there’s a healthy competition for sure.”
Fields repeated as City Section cross country champion in the fall but got sick the morning of the City track finals in May and had to settle for second place in the 3200 meters behind teammate Owen Lewicky.
He clocked 15:13 in the 5,000 meters at the Nike Outdoor Nationals in Oregon in mid-June and his goal for his senior year is the Division I state title: “I know who my peers are and think I can do it. Noah and I were talking before and he said if he lost to me it wouldn’t be good. I’m not too unhappy with second.”
Pali High teammates Axel Mammen (seventh in 17:16) and Blake Sigworth (17th in 18:15) joined Fields in trying to wrest the Dick Lemen Perpetual Trophy away from Loyola in a high school competition in which schools’ top three finishers scored points for their team.
Striding through the chute in 20th place with a smile on his face was 39-year-old Tonny Okello, who won the 10K a record five straight times from 2014-18 but had not run the Will Rogers race since 2019 when he got second in the 10K, snapping his streak.
“It’s a good little race, a lot flatter than the 10K,” said Okello, who had not run the 5K before. “I moved to Hollywood and did some commercials for Apple, Cisco and AT&T. I got the coronavirus in 2021 and even though it wasn’t real serious the effects lingered for awhile. I’ve been running once or twice a week, mostly on my own. I think I’ll try the 5K again next year. If I give myself a good two months of training maybe I can win.”
Right behind Okello was the women’s 5K champion Kaitlin Tanner, a 26-year-old from San Clemente who woke up at the crack of dawn to drive 80 miles north to the Palisades in time to register. In retrospect, she was glad she made the trip.
“This is the first time I’ve run this,” she said. “I’m from Louisiana but I lived in the Palisades for a few months two years ago further down Sunset and used to run through this neighborhood. I used to be part of LA Track Club but I haven’t done a competitive race in a year. I left two years ago right before this race.”
Tanner ran cross country and track all four years at Texas A&M, with two eighth-place and one 11th -place finish in her three 5,000-meter races as a senior in 2019. She believes her fastest 5K time was “17:50 or something” in college. Since February she has been a statistical programmer at ProPharma. Before that she was a graduate research assistant at the Univertsity of North Carolina in Wilmington. While living in the Palisades from March through June 2021, Tanner worked as a Senior Agronomist at Riviera Country Club, specializing in turf management. When told the race winners are eligible to ride in the parade later in the day she said: “I’d like to come back next year.”
Tanner’s chip time was 18:44 and trailing her by just five seconds was the women’s runner up Ava Baak, who graduated from Pali High less than a month earlier after winning the Post Cup Award as the school’s outstanding senior athlete. In the fall she will join Wexler at Michigan, where she will be vying for a spot on the cross country team.
“I felt good and think maybe I could’ve caught up to [Tanner],” said Baak, who won the 1600 meters at the City track finals in May. “I’ve run this 5K since I was 7 or 8. My brothers do the 5K too. This is my first competitive race since the high school season ended. I think I practiced with my coach and the team once, but that’s about it. I was 10 or 15 seconds away from my best time. I’m looking forward to Michigan and perhaps running club like Noah if I’m not on the varsity team. I love the environment there.”
Another Pali High alum, 21-year-old Darby Green, was third among women after being the leading lady last summer in 19:46. Eloise Rolle and fellow Palisadian Kate DeMartini were the top placers in the female under 10 age group while 10-year-old Ally Humby (25:16) and 12-year-old sister Mila (26:18) were first and third in their division. “They both beat me,” their 48-year-old dad Baxter, a retired Muay Thai champion, lamented as he watched the parade hours later.
Maya Hively won the girls’ 13-15 division; local Elana Schuldt was first in the female 35-39 age group; Mary Ellen Kanoff topped the 65-69 age group in 30:20; Cora Harvey (41:52) was first in the 75-79 category; and 86-year-old Raymee Olin (58:27) won her age group.
Palisadians also set the pace in several of the male divisions. Nine-year-old Ashlan Erwin (26:15) in the under 10; Gregory Strausberg (20:52) in the 40-44 class; and Gil Romoff (51:22) in the 85-89 range.
The 10K men’s champion was a 19-year-old from Woodland Hills named Henry Didden, who covered the 6.2 miles to Will Rogers State Park and back in 34:04. Didden attended Viewpoint School in Calabasas, where he ran cross country starting in ninth grade. He just finished his first year at Bucknell University in Pennsylvania, where he is on the Division I track team.
Didden is no stranger to the race. He ran it in 2019 and again last year and was first in his age division both times. In fact, Henry’s grandmother Gail ran in the very first Palisades 10K in 1978 and has run or walked it a few other times over the years.
“Henry’s father Craig ran the 10K with me as an 8-year-old back in the day,” Gail said. “We love the race! My husband Dan doesn’t run because he says why should he run if he can drive!”
The 10K runner-up, 55 seconds behind, was 44-year-old triathlete and coach Jim Lubinski, who won the 2011 race in 32:35, was fifth in 36:14 in 2019 and took third last July 4 in 35:39. The ex-Palisadian who now lives in Calabasas, is also a frequent participant in and winner of the Nautica Triathlon in Malibu and has been a swim, bike and run coach at Tower 26 in Santa Monica since 2016. He won the Illinois state championship in the mile as a seventh-grader with a time of 4:59, but his first love was hockey and his childhood dream was to play in the NHL and win the Stanley Cup. He played Division I college hockey in Fairfield, Connecticut and spent one year in the Central Hockey League before relocating to Los Angeles in 2005 at the age of 26. Three years later he entered the Ironman in Arizona and finished it in 10 hours flat.
Placing third in the 10K in 36:19 was 17-year-old Palisades resident Leo Craig, fresh off his junior year at Harvard-Westlake High in Studio City, where he clocked a personal-best 16:24 to place 10th in the CIF Southern Section Division 4 cross country preliminaries on the 2.93-mile course at Mt. SAC.
Coming in 12th overall in the 10K and winning the women’s race was 42-year-old mother of three Laura Osman of Encino, a part-time English professor at Valley College.
“I’ve always known about the race but never ran it before,” she said. “Going up Rivas was tough but once I got to the crest I kept going and got a second wind. There was just an unreal spirit, the crowd support was amazing and it was a lot of fun.”
Osman, who has two boys (12 and 13 years old) and a 6-year-old girl, ran cross country and track at UC Davis and runs for Cal Coast Track Club, finishing fifth overall and topping her age bracket in the Carlsbad 5000 last June.
Palisadian Kendall Macker was the only girl in the 10-12 age group to complete the 10K. Katie DeWitt, who won the 10K in exactly 41 minutes as a newlywed in 2016, was the ninth female 10K finisher and third in the 35-39 division in 46:51. She grew up on upper Chautauqua, ran cross country and track at Yale and first tried the Will Rogers race at age 10. She now lives in Oakland.
Kendra LaSalle (50:30) was first in the 45-49 range and Stacy Stern (44:20) won the 50-54 category.
Eleven-year-old Palisadian Christian DeMartini won the male 10-12 age group in a stellar 48:35 while 10-year-old Max Wagner, soon to be in fifth grade at Calvary Christian School, took second in 1:03:41. Running with his father Cort, Max was the youngest in his age group to complete the 10K.
Evan Stark was first in the 35-39 age group in 38:00; Dave Barnett (38:14) won the male 45-49 group; 55-year-old David Robinson was first in his division in 47:42; and 83-year-old Joe Cirillo was the lone runner in his age division to finish the 10K, doing so in 1:47:51.
The half-mile Kids’ Fun Run, under the direction of Danielle Ariola, began promptly at 9:30 a.m. on Alma Real Drive and was won by 9-year-old George Heidt, a lifelong Palisadian and a St. Matthew’s School third-grader, who was the runner-up last July 4. The Fun Run debuted in 1996.
None of the race records were broken. Peter Gilmore, who grew up in the Palisades and became a standout runner at Pali High and UC Berkeley, won the 5K a record eight times and set the standard of 14:10 in 2003 before the course got lengthened to certified distance. Annetta Luevano set the women’s 5K mark of 16:29 in 1995. Both 10K records were achieved in 1983. Russell Edmonds of New Zealand established the men’s time to beat of 29:46 while Katie Dunsmuir, who had won the previous year and who just graduated from Pali High, clocked 35:09. She went on to win four straight times from 1992-95.
The combined number of registrants for this year’s 5K, 10K and Fun Run was over 3,000—considerably more than last year’s total.
**** click on any photo below to view slide show ****
Photo: Steve Galluzzo
Photo: Steve Galluzzo
Photo: Steve Galluzzo
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