Photos: Oakland middle school students compete in the OAL Cross Country Championship

Three days after a 15-year-old boy was shot at Skyline High School in Oakland, 145 students from nine Oakland Unified School District middle schools safely competed in the Oakland Athletic League (OAL) Middle School Cross Country Championship on Saturday morning. 

Boys and girls stretched and warmed up in perfect weather — not cold, nor rain, but sunny — where families gathered to cheer on the young athletes.

“This is been super fun, and it’s awesome to have so many kids and families from all over Oakland showing up to local parks (every Saturday during the fall season) to run through our parks, and there is no better use for the East Bay Regional Park District than students running an event like this,” said event coordinator Byron McGovern.

Medals were awarded to the top ten boys and girls, and both the Montera boys’ and girls’ teams took home first-place trophies after running the 1.5-mile run. Claremont’s Clive Loveless Newton and Montera’s Charley Gordon took first place in the boys’ and girls’ divisions, respectively.

Skyline High School was home to beloved football coach John Beam before he took charge of the Laney College Eagles in 2004. Beam was shot last Thursday at Laney College and died the following day.

“I met John Beam when I was working for Oakland Lacrosse, and he was awesome! He opened the gates at Laney. He didn’t care that it wasn’t football. All he wanted was Oakland kids playing sports,” McGovern said. “I was just a random 20-year-old Oakland coach, and he was super nice to me, asked me about the team. And, you know, he’s like a god on campus, and he took the time for random people like me to know them. He wasn’t too big for what his legend status was. He could have been bigger than that.”