Bentley on Pace at MIT

During her four years at Palisades High, Sarah Bentley was always at or near the front of the pack. She  is continuing that trend as a freshman at MIT in Cambridge, Massachusetts. She was 12th overall and third on her team at the Williams Purple Valley Cross Country Invitational  last weekend at Williams College, completing the Women’s 6K in 24:08.1  to help the Engineers place second in the team standings behind Williams.      

Unable to compete in 2020 as the season was cancelled due to the coronavirus pandemic, Bentley is picking up right where she left off at Palisades, where she was a mutliple

time team MVP in cross country and track and field, a four-time state qualifier in cross country and a three-time state qualifier in track and field.

Bentley was the LA City Section 3200 meter champion as a freshman in 2017 and again as a sophomore in 2018. As a junior and again as a senior she took third in the City cross country finals at Pierce College.

A National Merit Commended Scholar, an AP Scholar with Distinction and a four-time Honor Roll member, she is majoring in math.

One of Bentley’s most memorable performances came her senior year at the Mt. SAC Invitational when she ran the testing three-mile course in 18:51 to win the Division I varsity girls race.

Bentley grew up by St. Matthew’s School and went to Marquez Elementary. She played basketball at the Palisades Recreation Center and swam for Westside Aquatics but gravitated to running while at Paul Revere Middle School. A standout student with a 4.5 GPA, she was deprived of her senior track season at Palisades because of COVID-19, but while in quarantine took up new hobbies like painting, hiking and reading new books.

Bentley got into MIT early and since May she has served as a front- end web development engineer for the reconstruction of SpaceNet, an interface that enables the simulation of space exploration campaigns. She is also a UX Engineer for a Media Lab project called Knitheworld.