Belen’s Frankie Ruiz, St. Brendan’s Brandon Williams are Dade Cross Country Coaches of Year
Frankie Ruiz did it again. Brandon Williams came oh-so-close to doing it for the first time.
Ruiz led the Belen Jesuit cross country team to yet another team state title.
Williams, meanwhile, coached the St. Brendan girls team to a state runner-up finish in Class 2A — the best team finish in school history and the highest finish among Miami-Dade County’s girls teams that made it to state.
As such, Ruiz and Williams are the Miami Herald’s Dade Cross Country Coaches of the Year.
For Ruiz and his Belen team, this is becoming commonplace. Their first-place finish this year was No. 13 for the school (extending its FHSAA record), No. 12 for Ruiz and the school’s fifth consecutive team title dating back to the 2017 season.
Six of Belen’s seven runners at the state meet in Tallahassee were among the top-20 finishers in the 234-runner field. The seventh runner? He finished 27th.
Sophomore Joshua Ruiz (no relation to Frankie) finished second in 15:37.4. The other point scorers in Belen’s latest state championship run: senior Adam Magoulas (ninth, 16:16.1), sophomore Evan Torres (10th, 16:16.9), junior Alec Torrecilla (14th, 16:19.5) and junior Roberto Leon (17th, 16:24.2).
As for Williams and St. Brendan, his team had four runners with top-30 finishes in the Class 2A race, led by junior Emma Hencock’s fifth-place effort (18:46.2). Freshman Gabriella Page (20th, 19:31.5), sophomore Kaycee Aquilino (27th, 19:42.6) and junior Daniela Alvarez (30th, 19:46.4) rounded out the quartet.
This marks the second time in the last three seasons that St. Brendan’s girls cross country team has posted a top-five team finish. The Sabres finished fourth in 2019. The school’s only other top-10 finish outside of those two years was a seventh-place effort back in 1976.
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