Four Cycle Dawgs finish season in top 10

Four Ramona High Cycle Dawgs finished the regular high school mountain bike racing season in the top 10 overall while the team maintained a seventh overall position.

The Cycle Dawgs are preparing for the California state championships on May 17 at The Dirt Club in Los Olivos, near the Los Padres National Forest.

Cycle Dawgs’ head coach Robert Grace said all of the team’s 18 cyclists showed improvement this year and met his goals that he summed up in two “f” words: fun and finish.

Everyone is excited to return next year, so they had fun, he said, and the team had no “did not finish” results.

Sophomore Gwendalyn Gibson took first place overall among the Division 1 and 2 junior varsity girls. She placed first in every race.

Jaron Cappos, a junior, had a fourth-place overall finish in the D1/D2 varsity boys category.

His sister, Stassa Cappos, competed her first year on the Cycle Dawgs, placing seventh overall in the D1/D2 freshman girls category.

Hayden Ellsworth captured 10th place overall among D1 sophomore boys.

The team finished the regular season at the “Victory at Vail” SoCal Finals April 25 and 26 at Vail Lake Resort in Temecula.

Gibson cycled through the JV girls finish line two minutes before the second-place winner.

Other race results:

Boys varsity: Jaron Cappos, 6th place

Boys JV: Ryan Mckinnon, 55th, Nick Stemper, 67th, Nickolas Verhine, 68th, and Jaime Leyva, 77th.

Boys Sophomore: Hayden Ellsworth, 8th, Travis Wagner, 20th, Andrew Finley, 24th, and Sean Duffy, 32nd.

Girls Freshman: Stassa Cappos, 7th.

Boys Freshman: Seth Levy, 16th, Patrick Myers, 43rd, and Richard Grenda, 48th.

“It was a good year overall,” said Grace. “We’re going to give the kids summer workouts so hopefully they’ll be stronger.”

The team doubled in size this year to 18, and Grace was assisted by five coaches.

He would like to recruit more girls for next year’s team.

“I’d like to have six girls on the squad,” said Grace.

Gibson and Jaron Cappos do not limit their competitive racing to the high school league. Both competed as amateurs in mountain bike cross country racing at the Sea Otter Classic April 16-19. The cycling event, held in Monterey, draws over 10,000 professional and amateur athletes.

Cappos, 16, competed in the men’s ages 17 to 18 category, placing 16th out of 42 competitors.

Gibson raced in the women’s ages 15 to 18 group, capturing fourth out of 17.